


Unwittingly

by Whispering_Sumire



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Alpha Laura Hale, Alpha Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), Alternate Hale Fire (Teen Wolf), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Friends, Christmas, Cook Stiles Stilinski, Curses, Diners, Domestic, Everybody Lives, Falling In Love, Family, Firefighter Derek Hale, Fluff, Friendship, Genius Stiles Stilinski, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Librarian Derek, Libraries, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Oblivious Derek, Oblivious Stiles Stilinski, Original Character(s), Pack, Pack Bonding, Pack Dynamics, Panic Attacks, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Scars, Scenting, Scents & Smells, Self-Esteem Issues, Siblings, Spark Stiles Stilinski, Sparring, The Hale Family, Training, Valentine's Day, beacon hills is mystical af
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 11:06:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17786222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whispering_Sumire/pseuds/Whispering_Sumire
Summary: Once upon a time, an Alpha werewolf, pregnant with her third child, unwittingly snubbed a powerful sorceress who was feeling petty that day by taking in her unruly, drunken demeanor, sighing, telling her to stop magicking the trees and flowers alive, and could she please call off the oversized dragonflies and the wyverns (thank the Gods it was wyverns, and not dragons, which would've been considerably bigger, harder to deal with, and much more fatal) and leave the Alpha's territory, thank you.Unbeknownst to nearly everyone, the sorceress, meanly, cast a little curse the pregnant lady's way as she swanned off, and, in due time, the Alpha would give birth to a child who opened his eyes seeing color.A romantic part of the mother worried, but, eventually, she realized it didn't really change much of anything, as her son lived and laughed and loved as sweetly and softly and kindly as anyone else, besides, she and her Mate quite liked having a child they could share the wonders of colors with.And so it was that the little, seemingly harmless curse, went unnoticed.[Or: In a world where you can't see color until you've touched your soulmate...]





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myboybuildscoffins24](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myboybuildscoffins24/gifts).



> Dear Sterek Valentine recipient, I really hope you meant it when you said you were down for anything, because hoo-boy did this run away from me, lol, also, also, I do hope you like it!! xoxoxo, ❀❀❀
> 
> Content Warning :: Stiles has nightmares and panic attacks;; Stiles' dad doesn't have healthy coping mechanisms, and he gets called on it;; the fire is a thing, but nobody dies

_Once upon a time._

It's how many stories begin, so perhaps this one should start that way, too.

Once upon a time, an Alpha werewolf, pregnant with her third child, unwittingly snubbed a powerful sorceress who was feeling petty that day by taking in her unruly, drunken demeanor, sighing, telling her to stop magicking the trees and flowers alive, and could she please call off the oversized dragonflies and the wyverns (thank the Gods it was wyverns, and not dragons, which would've been considerably bigger, harder to deal with, and much more fatal) and leave the Alpha's territory, thank you.

Unbeknownst to nearly everyone, the sorceress, meanly, cast a little curse the pregnant lady's way as she swanned off, and, in due time, the Alpha would give birth to a child who opened his eyes seeing color.

A romantic part of the mother worried, but, eventually, she realized it didn't really change much of anything, as her son lived and laughed and loved as sweetly and softly and kindly as anyone else, besides, she and her Mate quite liked having a child they could share the wonders of colors with.

And so it was that the little, seemingly harmless curse, went unnoticed.

* * *

Derek endures, with no small amount of difficulty, growing up surrounded by fantastical stories of soulmates, knowing that it's something he can't ever have.

The first color his mother ever saw was the spectacle that lived in his father's eyes, that same green-blue spectrum of hazel that Derek and all the rest of her children, with the exception of Gabriel, inherited to some degree or another. Laura had no idea, thought her eyes were the same as her mom's- since they were doe-big and framed by long, piano-wire lashes- until she met Cahya, and spent the rest of the day cuddling up to her fated one outside, marveling at the sky.

No one else in the family can see color, all of them having yet to meet their soulmate, and no one else in this small town has Macropia like he does—not like he'd expect anyone to, since only three percent of people in the world have it, and, you know. _Small_ town.

He isn't very upset about it, or, at least, he's not as upset about it as he _could_ be. Only one in fifty people _meet_ their soulmates, anyway, the rest stay achromatic, searching, or dating each other with the vague idea that if they ever find the person who makes them see color, the relationship might not work out. Or it could turn polyamorous, and, then, there's the possibility your soulmate's platonic, anyway. He's read all the stories, with the kind of unquenchable curiosity that comes from truly being on the outside looking in, and he knows that there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of ways a relationship could go.

He's come to the conclusion, after only sixteen years of life, that communication is probably more important than whether or not you see color the moment you touch a person.

The trouble with that hypothesis? Derek kind of _sucks_ at communication.

He learns this in full when he meets Paige, and the first, second, and third thing he does is put his foot into his mouth.

Honestly, he blames his Pack, he'd grown up in a whirlwind of people who were capable of scenting whatever you wanted or needed the moment you wanted or needed it, and, beyond that, touch and gestures and sub-vocal sounds, tacit, intrinsic, wolven language, has always been easier for him. There's also what Laura gleefully calls his terminal case of resting bitch face, which makes it seem like he's either teasing or insulting, when he really, really isn't.

Besides, intermingling with humans when you're a werewolf is hard enough without having something like Macropia ostracizing you further—he hasn't exactly had a lot of _practice_ in this arena.

The only tentative acquaintance-friends he has right now outside of family are the people in his basketball team, and, even then.

So, earnestly hoping to get on Paige's good side, he decides to start practicing. (By following her around like a love-sick puppy, Laura ends up telling him a week later, laughing.)

* * *

Derek's still not entirely sure how he got roped into covering his cousin's shift at the library while they're halfway across the world, determined to pluck one of the rarest lilies known to man because they have the _strangest_ hobbies, but he's glad for the extra few chances to try and talk to Paige, even if she still seems wary of him. He thinks she's warming up.

It's nearly midnight when he finds him, this tiny slip of a kid curled up in a lamplight-lit corner, surrounded by towers of various books, a few of them opened to random pages. The kid's probably the only other person here, besides him, and Derek vaguely wonders what might've happened if it had been anyone else- though he's still amazed that the highschooler got saddled with closing, for all that it's the weekend- since the only reason he even noticed there was still someone here was because he'd heard an out-of-place heartbeat, and he doubts that any human would've found him.

Derek's in the middle of imagining the kid getting locked in overnight when he gets close enough to catch his _scent_.

For one thing, it's _strong_ , saturating the whole aisle, for another, it's melancholic beautiful; the ripples of bitter coffee left out in the rain, a wilting bouquet of sodden roses, the heavy torrent of watery brine made crisp and sharper with something like spice-smoke, all of it reading overwhelming, desolate grief. The boy whimpers in his sleep, and Derek can see, now, how his crimson cheeks contrast the rest of his mole-dotted, milky complexion, how they're still wet with tears, water droplets cluttering his long eyelashes.

"Hey," he murmurs, gentling a hand down the boy's arm, the move meant to wake but not startle. All it earns him is a shuddery breath and a faint whine. "Shh, it's okay." Something deep within him that he doesn't expect, barely understands, compels him to brush a knuckle across the crest of a soaked cheekbone. "It's okay."

The boy's brow furrows, before dewy, syrupy doe-eyes open to meet his, then, inexplicably, widen, the kid's breath hitching as his heartbeat trips and speeds up dizzyingly.

"It's okay," Derek repeats, soothes, fingers brushing through the kid's tangled thicket of russet hair. "Sorry if I startled you," he flashes a flickering, reassuring smile, "just needed you to wake up."

"Your eyes," the boy says, dazed, voice thick with a peculiar, misty kind of awe. _"Beautiful."_

Derek blinks. "Thank you?" he says, mildly amused, "C'mon, it's really, really late, I'm sure your parents are worried about you; let's get you home."

The kid moves to sit up with a sniffle, his hair a mussed mop of rioting curls on top of his head that Derek fights not to snort at as he takes a small hand in his and hauls the bleary-eyed, depressed as all hell smelling human to standing. He doesn't really mind that their hands stay locked together as the kid gathers his things into his backpack and slings it over his shoulder, just waits, patiently.

"My sister's coming to pick me up," he says, "and I don't really feel comfortable leaving you to walk home alone-" not to mention, if anything happened because he _didn't_ offer, to the vulnerable human child? yeah, the elders in his Pack would have his head- "so, d'you want a ride?"

There's a tiny, nearly tangible pause, the scent in the air seeming to swirl, indecisive, as wide, too-sharp eyes peer up at him, assessing.

"You're Derek Hale, aren't you?"

Derek raises his eyebrows and tries not to feel offended at how _resigned_ that question sounded.

"Yes," he answers, drawing the word out a little sardonically. "You got a problem with that?" Because, really, he's tired, he wants to go home, and he doesn't think it would be fair of the Gods to force him to deal with some ignorant kid raised into biased prejudice _now_. Seriously, if he never hears that having Macropia means he doesn't have a soul again, it'll be too soon.

"No," the kid tells him, unexpectedly, a ferocious spark in his eyes making the syrup in them seem _molten_ , even as his scent plunges into something darker, all incense smoke curling around a ruthless rage of stormrain, a field of roses mauled by decay and sick-sweet death-rot, burnt coffee grinds, acrid-bitter and chokingly overwhelming. It's like being surrounded by the raw depths of despair, but it's the way that the kid _smiles_ at him, haplessly, a saccharine surrender, open and aching, as he squeezes Derek's hand and says, "It's nice to meet you, I'm Stiles," that chills him to the bone.

"Hi, Stiles," he breathes, lungs constricted painfully, throat tight, concern weighing heavy in his gut. "Nice to meet you, too."

He hears the familiar sound of the camaro's engine, his sister's heartbeat a steady, melodious undercurrent, and silently thanks the Gods as he steers Stiles toward the door. She's _much_ better with people than him, maybe she'll have an easier time with this.

(She doesn't.

Oh, sure, she manages to spur Stiles into _talking_ \- and, Hells, but that kid can talk with the best of them, he goes on about eight different tangents, and within the span of ten minutes has told them everything there is to know about the McCall family, explained how beetles use their legs in flight, and deflected literally every question concerning him until, by the end of it, all they could say for sure that they knew about him was his _name_ \- but the stranglehold of his upsetting scent settles, and remains for the whole of the car ride. He either doesn't notice their concern, or ignores it, twisting them in so many knots verbally that Derek's heavily reminded of his Uncle, both he and Laura left bemused and beyond bewildered as Stiles clambers out of the car and toward his best friend's house, cool as a cucumber.

"Damn," Laura says, still blinking away the stun of the aftermath. Then she grins, all teeth, no malice. "I like him."

Derek does too, he thinks, which makes his scent all the more unsettling.

Laura pats his shoulder, watching Stiles climb up a tree and into a window with steadily hardening eyes. "I know, deartháir beag," she murmurs. "I know."

And underneath the sun-stained tropical beach sands of his sister, the cumulus-cloud silken-coconut of himself, dead roses, overcooked coffee, and smoke-tortured rain lingers.)

* * *

It's nearly a week until he meets Stiles again, and, in that time, he and Paige have become... _something_.

She actually let him eat lunch with her today, _without_ ignoring him. His hopes are high, and his mood is bright, and there is the boy with syrupy eyes sharpened into some kind of brittle, his riot of unkempt oaken hair, his cloud of too-heavy, too-distressed scent.

This library is _old_ , and everyone who enters it, even the stern old man who's worked here for fifty years, is wary of the labyrinthian way everything's set up. If you're here for more than an hour, you're bound to get lost at least twice, if you're here for longer, without a doubt, every time, you _will_ lose something—granted, if you want it back enough to search for a good fifteen minutes, odds are, you'll find it again, but, point is, the Beacon Hills' library is notorious for being... _tricky_. And everyone is used to it, hell, most find it charming, and he guesses the residents of Beacon Hills have long since learned to accept the weirdness that surrounds their little town, the superstitions and old wives' tales that reign more here than they would in other, less supernaturally-steeped places.

But, Stiles, he maneuvers around like he knows every secret book-strewn alley, like he's memorized some secret map, and the library envelops him like an _old friend._ Derek watches the boy patter quietly around, snagging books that he's pretty sure even _Paige_ would struggle to read, before disappearing, and when, curious, Derek leaves his station to find Stiles curled in that same corner, basking in the spill of sunlight pooling there, he sees that the kid's surrounded by towers of literature again, reading five or six things at a time, intermittently scribbling things down in his notebook, a pink highlighter tucked behind his ear, a yellow one between his teeth, and a pen in hand.

He has a little freckle adorning the tip of his ear, Derek notices, and chuckles softly, shaking his head, at the boy's antics, feeling all the lighter for having seen them.

That night, stuck with closing again, he tries not to frown at the sight of Stiles passed out in that corner, one cheek pressed against a precarious stack of heavy books, the other smeared neon-yellow. His scent is still addled with strife, still vast and clinging, and for one, ridiculous moment, the purely animal part of Derek wants to drown Stiles' scent in his own, wants to cuddle and yip and play until he can learn what this aroma might morph into when Stiles is _happy_.

Indulging his instincts slightly, Derek crouches down in front of Stiles and scratches his fingers through increasingly wild hair, wondering if the kid ever _brushes_ it, their scents mingling a bit in Derek's effort to wake him.

"Stiles, c'mon, you really shouldn't be making—" A soft, startlingly wounded sound silences him, Stiles' scent getting deeper, saltier, and Derek, worry a gnawing thing in his gut, hushes him, murmurs, "It's okay. It's okay," chants it as he tugs his fingers through Stiles' tangles. "It's _okay."_

Misted eyes flutter open on the edge of a pained gasp, Stiles jerking upright, heaving for breath, heart thundering by _far_ too fast as Stiles drowns in the onset of sheer _panic_.

"Hey, hey," Derek drags the boy over his assortment of books and into his lap, his wolf rearing its' head, making him hyper-aware of everything around him, prepared to rip any danger apart with nothing but claws and teeth and the alarmingly loud need to protect. A crooning growl rumbles in his chest without his permission, control slipping dangerously (though he's got the sudden feeling that, even if he did accidentally shift right now, the boy in his arms wouldn't be in _any_ danger) as he tries to soothe through a mouth itching to drop fangs, "It's okay, it's alright, Stiles. Breathe, just _breathe_. It's okay, it'll be okay, breathe with me, a stóirín, please."

Stiles' lungs stutter, and for what feels like an eternity he can barely commit himself to the tiniest of whimpering pants, but, _finally_ , Derek gets him to follow along, shallow inhales becoming strong, deep pulls of air. It takes longer to calm him from his weeping, but Derek just rocks him, cradles him close, his wolven urges tapering, though the lilt-hum reverberating chainsaw-grit sound remains even as Stiles finally begins to settle.

When Stiles comes back to himself, it's with a half manic, half mortified chuckle. _"Fuck."_

"I would say 'language', but that looked like one _nasty_ nightmare, so I think you've earned a curse or two," Derek snarks half-heartedly, breathless with relief, and Stiles smiles faintly up at him.

He pokes Derek's chest and says, eyebrows raised, "You sound like my mama's jeep."

Derek shifts uncomfortably, replies, haltingly, "Do I?"

"Mmm." There's a weighted pause before Stiles presses his tear-soaked face into the crook of Derek's neck, fingers curling into his shirt. "She died," Stiles whispers hoarsely. "My mom."

Derek swallows past the lump in his throat, and, for lack of anything better, holds Stiles tighter. The boy melts into the embrace with a melancholy sigh.

Charred coconut flakes swirl in burnt coffee, incense smoke sews itself into heavy fog, rain-drenched roses wilting all around them. Derek doesn't notice how easily, _naturally_ , their scents combine, only mourns how much grief and sorrow saturates it all.

"It's late," Derek says after a few moments, rubbing his hand up and down Stiles' back and drawing him out of his renewed doze. "C'mon, my sister'll give you another ride. She might even give you some of the chocolate she keeps stashed in the glove-box, if you ask nicely."

"Don' have to ask nicely," Stiles mumbles sleepily as he begins to get up- Derek standing with him- and latches onto Derek's hand again before blinking at his stuff like it's a particularly stupefying puzzle. Derek snorts and bends down to shuffle the mess of notebooks and pens and highlighters into the overstuffed, overworn backpack. "I got the-the-the-" Stiles is continuing blearily as he watches Derek sling the burden over his shoulder with a furrowed brow, Derek hums supportively, leading the boy toward the doors- _"eyes."_

"Eyes?"

"Y'know," Stiles says, and peers up at him. Then, his eyes go wide and imploring, chastened but hopeful, lost and young, the syrup in them enough to drown in, bottom lip wobbling. "The _eyes,"_ he says again, feelingly.

Damn, Derek thinks, heart doing all sorts of funny things in his chest as the rumble that he'd barely noticed had stopped starts up again, this kid's _good._

(Laura does, in fact, give him chocolate from her stash. He barely even has to ask, and Derek clicks his teeth at her, ferine, because, normally, she tells him that if he wants any, he'll have to pry it out of her cold dead hands.

With an expression that says, _you don't have a leg to stand on,_ she gestures at his person, indicating the wolven lullaby-purr sound he's _still_ making, and he scowls at her.

Stiles bites into a king-sized kit-kat bar without separating the pieces like you're _supposed_ to, and Laura laughingly calls him a heathen. He sticks his tongue out at her and offers half of the pile she gave him to Derek, which has her protesting and trying to steal it all back at a red light. This, of course, ends in Derek climbing into the backseat to escape from her, and Stiles beams up at him as he presses into Derek's side, scent getting a little heady with the way it lightens, sweetens, if only fragmentarily.

Derek wraps an arm around his shoulder with a small smile of his own, too pleased at the change to care that his comforting growl only gets louder, Stiles' eyes softening with something like _happy_ for it.)

* * *

Laura isn't at all surprised that the twins manage to befriend Stiles, and, with him, Scott.

He must've still carried Derek's scent with him when he went to school, not to mention how his scent has seeped into her car, seeing as how her driving him to the McCall's house and Derek staying late at the library even when he isn't meant to close is becoming a more and more recurring theme. Stiles seems their type, besides.

Gabriel is intrigued by the mystery of him, and soothed by the way Scott can sometimes act as a buffer, where Cordelia just _runs_ with it, Stiles and she halfway to planning how to take over and rule the world in the span of minutes.

His scent is beyond worry-inducing, as is the way he acts, sometimes, but together with his best friend and the twins, who're obviously becoming fast friends, he seems more his age, more open, bright, and Laura half-laments that Derek isn't here to see it, because she knows it would make him smile.

* * *

After Derek and Paige's first date, a fight, and their first kiss, Derek's cousin comes home.

Which is fine. _Should_ be fine.

Only, it makes him feel antsy. He kind of... _liked_ the librarian job? Even if the other workers only ever barely took him seriously, it had been a challenge to be personable in an environment that was hushed even as it smelled of pandemonium with an undercurrent of book-musk, and he'd liked organizing the shelves, putting books away, reading them, listening to heartbeats flutter when a reader got to a particularly intense scene, parsing out the different emotions any one person was having in reaction to some novel or other, snorting at the quiet groans of schoolagers frustrated with their homework, getting lost amongst the aisles and feeling a tacit kind of wonder each time that not even he knew how that worked, and... and _Stiles_.

Maybe that isn't the person he should be thinking of, since Paige visits the library almost as religiously as the kid does, but...

It's like it's on the tip of his tongue, dancing at the back of his throat, a taunting riddle that he _almost_ has the answer to.

He'll find, in the next day or so, that it wasn't something he'd really needed to worry about, since Stiles and Scott were quickly becoming the twins' best friends, and it barely took a week before the whole family was attached, enamored, and endeared—less than for Laura, who was already wrapped around Stiles' little finger, and who had taken to Scott like a mother-hen to a naive chick.

And though he'll still miss what it felt like to work at the library, he'll find, too, that this strange, encompassing urge within him to care for and protect Stiles lures him there, anyway, to that corner the boy goes to hide in when the depths of missing his mama become too much.

* * *

"Are you sure you like me?" Paige asks on their fourth date, which, after everything, is kind of fair.

Their second date had been lovely, a picnic in the park that had turned into passionate kisses and tentative touches, until some odd shiver-chill had licked warningly in his gut, his wolf rising with a ferocious howl, and some part of him had just _known_ that Stiles needed him. Turns out, he'd tussled with a well-known bully after they'd made fun of the twins for being, well, a little more _animal_ , than normal, and he'd earned himself a broken nose and a lecture from his father for it.

He'd also gotten a two-week suspension, because it was very much a _you should see the other guy_ situation, and Derek, having abruptly stranded Paige, had managed to burst into the school just as Deputy Stilinski'd finished reaming Stiles. And the whole hall had smelt like Stiles and his father's misery, the older man's disappointment, frustration, lingering traces of whiskey, all things Derek had cataloged and immediately ignored in favor of the extreme visceral reaction that seemed to swallow him whole the moment he took in Stiles' _blood_ , fresh and damning, in the air.

It had taken every ounce of self-control he'd had to stuff himself into an empty classroom as the shift took him, but he must not've gone quickly enough because he'd heard Stiles making excuses to his dad about needing to get his stuff, and to, please, just wait for him in the car, he'd be there in a moment, and not ten seconds later the kid was hurrying into the classroom after him, closing and locking the door as soon as he was inside. Whatever restraint he'd had left crumbled when Stiles had called out to him in a trembling, worrying tone, and he'd rushed to him, scooped him up, and held him close, gnarring rough breaths into his hair as Stiles'd wrapped around him like a limpet, easy and yielding, undaunted by the cruelly vicious sounding sub-vocal growl, the claws and the eyes and the hairier, more ferine face.

"It's okay," he'd said, his breath ghosting across Derek's much more pointed ear. "It's okay, I'm okay, the twins are okay, everything's fine, Der, we're all fine."

Like that, slow and steady and soft-spoken soothing, he'd calmed Derek down, until the growl became that lilted lullaby it'd been the night Stiles woke in the throes of a panic attack, until the wolf conceded to settle beneath his skin once more, letting him shift back to human.

"Stiles," he'd whispered brokenly, still holding on so, so tight, abruptly feeling unbearably unsure.

"It's okay," Stiles had told him again.

And Derek had believed him.

Their third date, Derek had ended up standing her up, for all that he hadn't meant to, because despite the grounding Stiles had received for fighting in school, his father had work, and Stiles already had a loophole in the wings.

"If I can't go anywhere, then you all need to come here. I'm assuming you guys and I need to have a... _talk?"_

And considering Scott had seen Gabriel and Cora flash their eyes and drop their fangs, growling, when Stiles had actually _gotten_ the broken nose, and subsequently been the one to hold them back from killing the ones responsible, they all really, really did. So, they'd waited until Deputy Stilinski had gone on night shift, and the whole Pack had visited the Stilinski house, Stiles and Scott waiting for them, to tell them what, exactly, they were, and all the dangers that came with it.

Humans being in-the-know, humans _befriending_ them, especially humans as young as Stiles and Scott were? well, dangerous was an understatement.

Still, as the twins had clung to each other and dreaded the reaction, the rest of the Pack crowding Stiles' pristine-to-shining livingroom (and, for all that they'd been used to the way Stiles' scent was a particular brand of strong that packed an extra, terribly upsetting punch with just how _sad_ it often was, he doesn't think any of them had been prepared for how it saturated his house, nearly drowning the bare ghost of the Deputy's whiskey-infused sillage) looking grim and expectant, Stiles and Scott had glanced at each other, shrugged, and, just, _accepted_ them.

Like it was a foregone conclusion.

Like the other thing had never even been an option.

Like it was _easy_.

And, then, never ceasing to surprise, Stiles had wrangled them all into staying for dinner and a movie. Dinner that he and Scott had been resolved to cook on their own ("I cook for my dad and me and Melissa and Scott all the time." A worrying statement spoken as flippantly and nonchalantly as anything), but which had become a rather big ado after Stiles had begrudgingly accepted help from a very determined, fiercely doting Laura, then, from their mom who'd been in much the same state, then Philip, who'd been the perfect picture of lazy indifference, despite the well-hidden incensed concern that'd been welling in his eyes, then Uncle Peter, Derek, dad, the twins, Donnie, Letitia, Cahya, Connor, until getting around was a matter of dancing because there'd literally been no space between any of them.

And for the first time since Derek had met him, Stiles had thrown his head back and, in a sea of werewolves making a mess of his kitchen, unbridled and _kind_ , laughed.

Fresh roses had bloomed, incense smoke had danced, flush with a spice-rich, ethereal kind of musk, cold, cream-sweetened coffee an exhilarating, sugar-crusted element with only a _hint_ of nutty bitterness, the rain blissfully absent, and, ah. _Ah_ , Derek had thought, _this_ is what Stiles smelled like with happiness glittering in his warm-syrup eyes.

It had been a kind of wonder that, at the time, his scent had been soaked in the _Pack's_ , like he was _one of them_ , like he always had been.

And, in the midst of all the chaos, he'd found Derek and grinned, wide, a little smug, and surprisingly bright. "I told you it would be okay, Der, didn't I?"

Now, Derek's sitting with his maybe-sorta-could be? girlfriend, and all he can think about is that smile, how clean that house was when, it seems, Stiles' dad is almost never there, how Stiles has nightmares and panic attacks and his dad smells like whiskey as much as he smells like grief.

How Stiles had seen him teetering on the edge of control, and his first instinct had been to _go to him_.

How he still has no idea how Paige might react if she knew.

So, she asks him, "Are you sure you like me?"

And he thinks that he loves the music she's capable of creating, the fire she carries, the intelligence that sharpens it. He thinks that he loves the idea of them together, and the way she looks at him, sometimes, like he's utterly _gentle_ , and the way it feels to kiss her, to have her skin under his fingertips.

He thinks all this, but it still feels like a lie when he says, doubts clawing him from the inside out, "Of course I do."

* * *

Stiles says, "Teach me."

And Derek sighs.

The kid had just had a particularly bad panic attack after learning about how many Packs were visiting, and why. He shouldn't have known, at all; Derek's sure the elders had meant to keep everyone who didn't need to be involved out of it entirely, but Stiles isn't the type to back down when something piques his curiosity, and he can be incredibly manipulative and ingenuitive when he wants to be.

"You said it's dangerous," Stiles continues, words still a little hiccuppy, cheeks poppy-powdered and tear-stained, "you _all_ keep saying that it's dangerous, being a human child running around with werewolves, so. Teach me how to fight. Or, learn how to fight with me? If it's so dangerous for me, it must be for you, too."

"I heal," Derek points out, and begins seriously lamenting having been talked, coerced, and otherwise bribed into eavesdropping on meetings with Laura, reporting his findings back to the kids (Stiles, Scott, _and_ the twins, who all listened with serious consideration and steadily increasing wariness), and, then, somehow, dragged out to the abandoned distillery with Stiles to watch a neighboring territory's Alpha demand blood from the hunters for his dead Beta.

Even Derek knows that won't go over well, and he'd seen how Laura had shifted uncomfortably behind their mother's shoulder, how mom had grimaced, but none of them had been able to deter Ennis, and then Stiles had begun choking on nothing but air, and Derek had had to drag them deeper into the Preserve so he could calm him down somewhere they'd be less likely to get caught.

"You could still _die,"_ Stiles says, a little shrill, the last word cracking. "You _all_ could, Der, and you're—. I mean, you and Laura, the twins, _everyone_ , I—." He swallows thickly, eyes and voice gone watery again, sticky and trembling. "After my mom died... my dad was all I had. And-and it felt like he'd left me, too, you know? Because he's never home, and if he is he's... _drunk_. But you. All of you. You're my _family."_ A big, gasping, shuddery breath, gaze fervent and ruthless. "I can't lose you. I _won't."_

There's an impact in those words, the whispered promise of _packmate_ , and _packbond_ , and Derek wonders if Stiles even realizes. It's barely been a month since they told he and Scott, and the two of them warmed to it all so exceptionally quickly, Scott by just being generally accepting and compassionate, Stiles by being that, and an attentive, if not zealous, student to boot.

Stiles and Laura, who's studying these things as the Alpha's heir, have had multiple trivia contests about 'were culture, by now, and Stiles has won more than half of them. He knows things even _Peter_ doesn't, and that's saying something.

"Stiles..." Derek pads closer, brushes a hand through wind-swept hair, feeling a zinging moment of pride that it's less ratty than it used to be, because he'd chased Stiles down with a hairbrush the other day despite his protests that it would just be easier to buzz it off. "You're _ten_. We should be protecting you, not the other way around."

"I'll be eleven in a week," Stiles mutters, ducking his head with a sniffle and scuffing the toe of his shoe in the dirt.

Derek blinks, "Really?"

"Teaching me how to fight would probably be the perfect birthday present," he says hopefully, and Derek tugs on a particularly unruly lock of cinnamon-oak hair.

_"Stiles."_

The boy looks up at him through his tear droplet cluttered lashes, sniffles again, dewy molten-syrup eyes getting wide and pleading, and Derek's heart breaks and melts in the same breath. "Please?"

One day, he thinks. One day, those eyes won't work on him. He'll build up a fucking resistance, or something.

"Gods," he sighs, rolling his eyes heavenward before shaking his head, exasperated, _"fine."_

And Stiles, solid win in his sails, beams and jumps into Derek's arms with a crushing hug, smokey-rose-coffee scent brightening, inordinately pleased, braiding into fluffy clouds and summery winds and fresh coconut.

Derek, mourning his own gullibility, and the undeniable soft-spot he has for the kid in his arms, tightens his hold, breathes their scent in, and hopes that learning to fight with Stiles will actually be any help, when war seems to be on the horizon.

* * *

It ends up being not just Stiles and Derek, because the moment Stiles tells the others (and he _does_ tell the others, much to Laura's chagrin and Philip's amusement; "Why on earth did you follow us?" his sister asks him later. His glare asked mockingly why she helped them spy in the first place, and since the answer was both obvious and readily apparent, she just groaned and gave it up as a lost cause. He would've laughed at her, but he's in just as much of a predicament for it as she is), they all want in on it, too.

If something bad's going to happen, if there are hunters and foreign Packs on our territory already, then we should've been learning long before now, anyway, they say.

And Laura trades a look with Philip, the only one older than her here, before sighing a sigh of the long-suffering when he just smiles and shrugs dopily, as delighted as he is intrigued by these new developments, and therefore "Utterly unhelpful," she accuses bitterly.

"Okay," she tells them, agitatedly running her fingers through her hair, _"fine._ I'll meet with our Emissary and Cahya's Alpha, see if I can't find us all someone who'd be willing to teach us how to defend ourselves, if nothing else." She snorts, smiles wryly, "Not like I can't see the logic in this idea—you're right, we _should_ be learning this stuff, with the lives we lead. But I really do think you're worrying over nothing, there might be some... _discourse_ , right now, but we've had a treaty with the Argents for three generations, and we're allied with nearly every Pack in the state, quite a few outside of it—"

"What about the stories?" Stiles interrupts, "All those stories about Gerard Argent and everything he's been doing since his wife died and he became acting regent? Do you think he'd really uphold the Code, let alone your family's _treaty?"_

"Kid's got a point," Philip says, waving a chewed on twizzler in Stiles' direction. "Dude's a psychopath."

Laura glares at their older brother as he sticks the candy back in his mouth until he puts his hands up in surrender. "I _know,"_ she grits, returning her attention to Stiles, her whole demeanor softening at the way he, Scott, and the twins are looking up at her from their places lounging around on the rug, like they're waiting for her to start story-time instead of forcing her to hold a mini, impromptu Pack-council of sorts. "That's part of the reason I'm agreeing to this. I think we'll be okay, I really do, but... you know. Just in case."

The twins cheer, excited, and Scott wheezes a giggle when he gets tackled into a group hug, where Stiles just sprawls out on top of the small pile of bodies, smug and grinning from ear to ear as his hand dives into the tangled mass to start tickling random feet.

Cora yelps, springs away, and runs out of the room, prompting Stiles to give chase with maniacal laughter, Gabriel hot on their heels, towing Scott behind him by the hand.

"Hey, be careful roughhousing with the humans!" Laura calls after them, receiving only sounds of childish glee in return. "Good Gods, what am I even getting myself into?" She mourns as something crashes in a vaguely downstairs direction.

Derek bites his lip, feeling just as inexplicably giddy, happy-drunk as the kids are, but also feeling incredibly thankful and proud of his sister, not just for acquiescing to their request, but also...

"You're gonna make a really good Alpha, one day, Lulu."

She startles at that, staring at him, wide-eyed.

"He's right," Philip chimes in. "You did good, laoch bídeach."

Laura shifts from foot to foot, and ducks her head, blushing furiously. She clears her throat softly, "Thanks. I—just. Thanks."

* * *

After their second session with Le'Mabh and Digsvestya (essentially being taught mixed martial arts, with heavy leanings on capoeira, taekwando, and boxing—though they were in the early stages, yet, still learning the basics), they visit Stiles' favorite Diner- a little dive off the beaten path that none of the Hales have visited before- and learn the joys of the best curly fries and milkshakes in Beacon Hills.

"Hey, whatever happened to you being grounded?" Cordelia asks Stiles around a mouthful of food, and Gabriel clicks his tongue at her. She gives him a look, snapping, _"What?"_

"Manners," he says, put upon. "I'm your _twin_ , Cora, _you_ eating with your mouth full is basically the same as _me_ eating with my mouth full."

"And it's just _gross_ , either way," Scott says mildly.

"Oh, c'mon, dude, don't pretend I wasn't getting on your case about the exact same thing, like, literally the day before yesterday," Stiles laughs, and Scott shrugs with an affirmative sort of _meh_ sound, before grinning good-naturedly.

"You're all disgusting little twerps," Laura decides, "who are eating me out of house and home."

"Hey! We're getting a family discount?" Stiles says, the words lilting up at the end like a question when she tosses a half-hearted glare in his direction.

"I'll pay for half," Philip says, reaching over to poke Laura on the nose, "so quit your complaining. Goodness, you're so frugal."

"Frugal?" Cora grumbles, "Cheap's more like it."

"You watch it, deirfiúr bheag. I'm your ride, I'll leave you on the side of the road one of these days, just you wait."

Cordelia clicks her teeth, all animal, "Yeah? Well, I'm a wolf, I'll just _survive."_

"Ladies, ladies," Philip intones with a sunshine smile, "you're both ferocious apex predators, settle down."

The sisters harrumph, returning to their food, Gabriel and Stiles snorting at their antics while Scott giggles.

"Stiles," Derek cuts in, while he still can. "Grounded?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. That. Uhm. Well. There's a good possibility my dad forgot? He's been pretty busy. But, yesterday was the last day of my suspension, anyway, and the weekend'll be over soon, so." He shrugs, dipping four fries at once into Derek's milkshake (strawberry) before dipping it into his own (choco-banana) and shoving the handful into his mouth like a chipmunk, making an incredibly pleased sound.

"Oh, Gods," Gabriel mutters, "You're worse."

"I resent that," Stiles garbles, still chewing, and half the table makes exaggerated grossed-out noises as Cora cackles and high-fives him over their food.

"Gods, I never want to have kids," Laura says.

Philip swirls a hand around her face, closing his eyes in faux-concentration, and says in his best melodramatic mystic shrill-pitched cooky-accented voice, "For you, child, I envision near a dozen pups, running around your feet and tripping you _constantly."_

The table erupts in racuous laughter as Laura grits, albeit without very much heat, "I _hate_ you."

Derek manages a smile for it all, but he's still worried, _has_ been worried, about the little pieces of Stiles' home-life he's dropped for them like crumbs over the past few months. He knows, understands, that Deputy Stilinski is grieving, and still pushing to pay off Stiles' mom's medical bills, but...

He sighs, feeling sticky and claustrophobic, the heat from the workout combined with uncomfortable plastic-y booths and too many people crammed at one table helped very little by the company and the delicious food, especially when his mind feels stuck in a rut like this, nerves fever-fried, body lethargic and exhausted.

Stiles elbows him, mouths 'you alright?' A silent question under the din, and Derek has no idea what expression he dons in response, but ten seconds later, Stiles is pushing his plate away and standing on the booth-seat as he grabs Derek's arm.

"Der-bear's gonna take me home-" the twins and Scott and Laura all make disappointed aww'ing noises, questioning why, as Stiles talks over all of them, climbing over the back of their booth and into the empty one behind them, dragging Derek with him- "because my dad might be home, soon, and you guys have me all worried about following the _rules_ , now. You have no one to blame but yourselves!"

And, with that, they make their escape, to the tune of their packmates calling out their affection and telling them to be safe.

"Thanks," Derek tells him feelingly, as the fresh air washes over them and Stiles' hand nestles itself in his.

"No problem," Stiles says, with a soft, understanding smile.

They walk together in companionable silence, Derek's thoughts fleeting, trailing things, the feeling of Stiles occasionally squeezing his hand or absently scratching at his palm as grounding as the nostalgic, half-lost tune the boy is humming in lieu of chattering like he normally might. It's... nice, and languid-soft, everything slow and steeped in a good kind of sleep-ache, the feeling settling in his muscles, curling behind his eyes.

Stiles' formless song gets derailed by a yawn and Derek lets go of his hand to wrap an arm around his shoulders, "Almost there."

Stiles chuckles, oddly drawn, and snuggles closer, lifting his other hand to tangle their fingers again, over his shoulder.

When they do finally get there, the cruiser's in the driveway.

"Looks like he's home," Stiles says, vaguely surprised, before he cracks another yawn.

Derek lets his senses stretch, and frowns slightly. Stiles notices the expression and raises an eyebrow, "What's up?"

"He's asleep," Derek tells him. "And..." he feels his face scrunch up, "sick?"

Mists of disappointment and resignation find residence in brittle syrup-sticky amber-glass eyes, Stiles' scent- which had been, until now, remarkably bright, clear, _happy_ \- getting dragged down, all sick-sweet smoke, molding roses, burnt coffee, and stormrains, as the boy sighs, heavy.

"Do you... Should I come in with you?"

Stiles flashes a faint, haggard kind of smile that doesn't seem to reach his eyes at all, "Not this time, no," he says, and goes up on his tip-toes to kiss Derek on the cheek before drawing away. "Thank you for walking me home."

"Of course," Derek breathes, the deep, twisting hole in his gut that contains his worries for a boy who has fast wormed his way into Derek's life, Pack, heart, gets all the deeper, and Derek has no idea what to do about it.

Just watches Stiles disappears into that grief-stricken, sorrow-stained, altogether too lonely, house.

And, with a deep, wavering breath, walks away.

* * *

Of course, he doesn't walk _far_.

He just about manages the treeline before something painful and constricting tugs at his heart and he can't bear to take another step. Only, it's obvious that Stiles didn't want him to stay, let alone venture inside—they said their goodbyes, and he should... really... go, now.

He doesn't.

He can't.

He finds himself up a tree and on top of a particularly comfy patch of roof that he knows is directly above Stiles' room. And he listens as Stiles wakes his drunken father enough to get him to the couch, scents chemicals on the air as he cleans whatever bilious-smelling mess the man left him, grumbles over the clinking of empty bottles, "You really gotta stop doin' this, dad."

And wonders what on earth he could ever possibly do. It seems too much, too heavy a burden, and the realization that Stiles has probably been forced to carry it ever since his mom died, maybe even _before_ then, nearly breaks him.

* * *

Frustration.

That's what breaks them, Derek and Paige.

Because, see, the thing is, two-thirds of him is entrenched in the news Laura shared with them this morning, her eyes haunted and particularly disturbed as she relayed how atrociously fucked up Deucalion's meeting with Gerard Argent went—

("Mom _warned_ him," she'd said, fervent and cracking around the edges.

"We _all_ knew it wasn't going to go well," Stiles had said. "No doubt it'll only get worse from here."

And for a moment, one weak, terrible moment, he'd felt as lost as his sister looked. But then they'd both caught the gazes of their elder brother, of the three now-eleven-year-olds. Grim, a little chased, but determined, daunted, but doubtless.

All of them had hope, _believed_ , that they'd get through this. Which had been... humbling. Awe-inspiring. Kind of lovely.

"We learn to fight," Laura had said, soaking it all in, letting their resolve weave steel into her spine. "And we prepare."

"Damn right," Stiles had grinned, crooked and impish, and Philip had smacked him upside the head.

"Language, you heathen," he'd scolded, and the doom and gloom of the moment had lightened, if only slightly.)

—and the rest of him is caught up in his fear for Stiles, his indecisiveness about what to do, if he should tell anyone, if that would be breaking a trust he doesn't think he's even _earned_ yet, or... And while all this is simmering within his mind, boiling him alive, Paige is talking about what kind of cello-case she should buy with her allowance, and if she should be pursuing _that_ as her career, or science, since those are her ultimate passions.

And he gets it, this stuff _is_ important, and it's important to _her_ , and that's okay. Good, even, that she's looking so far ahead and being so practical. A tiny part of him is bursting with pride and hope for her, but, too, he feels _cagey_. He can't tell her _anything_ , he can't share his fears and doubts, or rely on her, or even try to commiserate on the future with her, because, beyond the simple fact that she doesn't really seem inclined to factor him in, anyway, the future for him is kind of... grey.

It has to be.

He hopes to live through whatever war is so obviously coming, but he has no idea what'll happen in _order_ for him to survive, or if... _if._

Living day by day is all he has right now, and he wants to ask, desperately, if his slowly burgeoning terror is just him being melodramatic, if the gut feeling he's had ever since hearing that Deucalion was _blinded_ , two of his Betas _slaughtered_ , so close to their territory, that something horrible is on the horizon, and there's no way they'll ever be ready—he wants to ask if that's silly, or, if it isn't, he wants her to hold him, to let him cling like the end of the world is coming, because it fucking _might be_.

But he can't.

Because she doesn't know anything, and she's smiling, and she's looking ahead, wings spread, already so prepared to fly.

He loves her, yeah. But, maybe, right now, that just isn't enough.

It hurts, to break up with her, but she seems impossibly okay with it, and they come away from the whole thing as friends.

Laura, when she hears, tugs him onto the couch with her, shares a carton of salted caramel ice cream with him as Philip brushes his hair and braids flowers into it.

His first big relationship, and it only really lasted three and a half months.

"Honestly," he says, scalp tingly, full and half-asleep with his head in his sister's lap as Morticia and Gomez Addams waltz on-screen, "it was kind of anti-climactic."

"I wish I could say the same," Philip mourns with an exaggerated sigh, "my first love was a temperamental selkie who tried to drown me. _Twice_. And _then_ they tried to marry me. I rather think they got the order of things wrong."

Derek chokes on a laugh, and lets himself cry a little, because it does feel like he lost something. But tomorrow, he thinks, hopes, prays, will be a better day.

* * *

Derek still doesn't know about this, is a little unsure of what he's doing, moreso because... Yeah, he skipped school for this. And he broke into a _Deputy's_ house.

But he feels more and more vindicated, validated, with every hidden bottle he finds, for the trash bags full of _emptied_ bottles. Maybe this isn't a good idea, maybe this is the _worst_ idea he's ever had, but he has a feeling Stiles won't ever tell anyone (as much as he talks, he never says much about himself), will take on the burden and just _keep going_ , and he doesn't feel like this is the type of thing he can share with other people without Stiles' permission, so.

He's going to try to do something about it himself.

And he knows, he _knows_ , okay, how terrible a plan this is, but it's all he's got. That, and hope, because if everything else is determined to go in the absolute worst direction (and it is, Gods, but it is), well, maybe Stiles' dad will be the thing that gives, the one good, actually _productive_ , thing he can do.

When Noah first comes in, his initial reaction is to pull his gun, which, _fair_.

"Woah, woah," Derek starts, raising his hands in surrender, "I'm sorry, sir. I'm a friend of Stiles'? Please don't shoot me? I just—. I thought we should talk."

"A friend of Stiles'," the man repeats, slowly, and then raises his eyebrows, gestures at Derek's whole, gangly, soon-to-be-seventeen person. _"You?"_ Disbelief oozes from the word.

"It's a long story, sir."

"Well, I ain't got time and you _broke into my house_ , so—" he comes closer. Close enough to see the evidence of his vices, all piled up and spread out for the world to see. He freezes, nearly takes a recoiling step back before he stops himself. "What the hell?"

"Like I said, a friend of Stiles'," Derek repeats, soft, as soothing as he's able, like trying to approach a wild animal. "Some of the things he was saying gave me ideas," he waves a hand, slowly, over the bottles (and a disturbing after-image digs its' claws into his head, of him performing parlor tricks; if he could magically turn all the whiskey to water he's got no doubt he would, but the thought, for reasons he doesn't entirely understand, makes him nauseous), "this was just the follow up."

Which is as close to the truth as he's willing to cut.

Noah swallows with a click, and Derek hears the increase in heartrate just as well as he hears the safety clicking on. The gun's still pointed at him, and if he was human, he doesn't think he'd have noticed at all. "That so?"

"Yeah," Derek breathes, feeling safe enough to put his hands down. Then, remembering a silly, vaguely depressing conversation, "Peanut butter and jelly." Noah blinks, startled. "He's only eleven, and he can _cook_ , I'm pretty sure some of the things he makes are restaurant quality, but when I asked him what he wanted to eat for his birthday, he said he wanted you to make him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, that it's been awhile since he's had one, and no one makes them like you do."

Noah's eyes are wide, cheeks flushed, shoulders trembling.

"Did you ever make him one?" Derek asks, and he knows he's twisting the knife, just like he knows the Deputy forgot Stiles' birthday. Being gentle, here, is so, incredibly difficult, when all he wants to do is rage, the wolf within him snarling and biting at the bit, but, no. Even if he didn't understand what culminated in all of this—

Stiles loves his father.

And that earns Noah... _something_.

This, Derek supposes. A civil conversation instead of a kidnapping (he's pretty sure his family would support him if he ever _did_ decide to kidnap Stiles, they all love him just as much as he does; it's a solid plan b, at any rate).

"No," Noah answers, ragged, shaken, and the gun lowers, his gaze skating to the bottles.

He looks _thirsty._

Derek tries not to hate him for that.

"I'm also friends with the guy who runs AA meetings downtown," Derek says. "If you maybe wanted his number."

Noah's eyes squeeze shut, and for a solid, agonizing minute, all Derek can see is terrifying, insurmountable loss. Part of him wants to scream that Stiles is grieving, too, that the idea of losing anyone he loves makes him hysterical, that he tries to look after them all, frantically, fervently, _selflessly_ , and that he's so lonely it breaks Derek's heart. He wants to shake this man and _roar_ , because Stiles hid his nightmares and his panic attacks in the depths of a library so that he wouldn't be a burden, because Stiles _thinks of himself as a burden_.

And shouldn't you have been there? shouldn't you have been there, looking after him, protecting him when no one else would? Showing him you still loved him? That it _wasn't_ his fault?

Where were you?

Was it _worth_ it?

... Derek knows that he doesn't really have any right to feel this way, but the emotions spin madly within him. He breathes through them, shuffles it all away, and the guilt he feels for being so angry? yeah, he stuffs that down, too.

"Yes," Noah whispers, very, very close to broken. "Yeah, I'd like that."

_Thank the Gods._

* * *

When Laura gathers them to tell them of Deucalion's atrocities, it's with Peter at her side.

Peter, their Pack's Left Hand, the only one among them whose wolf has _blue_ eyes.

And Peter, who says, "My, I knew you lot were sneaking around, but I had no idea it was like _this,"_ when he sees the kids all assembled on the rug in Laura's room, Philip sitting at her desk with his back leaned against the wall, his feet kicked up on the back of her chair, and Derek standing, vigil guardian, in the corner, their somber, attentive gazes soaking the young woman standing at their fore, ready, waiting, as if they're perfectly prepared to let her lead them through the gates of Hell, because they not only expect her to bring them back, they have _faith_ that she will.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were planning a coup."

But he does know better.

He'd figured out some of what they were doing fairly quickly—it's not as if they were trying very hard to hide it. Talia's children and the twins' friends, Scott and Stiles- who, by now, were as good as family, were like brothers to the twins, themselves- had been meeting like this in the attic that served as his niece's bedroom, in all its' soundproofed splendor, ever since a little before Ennis' Beta even died. At first, he'd thought it just the games children play, all of them still so young, after all, but Laura's eyes, incrementally, started to change, the look in them.

It was pure will, a touch of rebellion, and a fearful concession to a role she'd seemed to be slowly, steadily realizing was a heavy burden to bear. No more did she laughingly brag that she was the Alpha's heir; no more did the rest of the children, when she was with them, roll their eyes at the proclamation or act as if it was an inside joke. They saw the weight of the crown descending upon her head, and while none of them begrudged her it, he's also beginning to think that none of them, for one second, would ever let her even _think_ about carrying it alone.

Then, there was the atmosphere, how it'd become sobering and solemn, even where there was joy and laughter and play to be had among them, it was obvious that they knew just how fragile the sanctity of the peace around them was becoming. And, too, there was the way they interacted with each other.

As a Pack, The Hales had always been closer than your average family, and, to be honest, Peter had never thought about it much beyond that. He'd resented his sister, sure, for her softness, for petty things and nit-picked flaws and the unease he felt among them, the way his packbonds were... _frayed_ , but he knew that lingering on the outskirts of the Pack came with what he was, he'd seen it with his Aunt Shy when _she_ was Left Hand, he'd grown up in it after she named him her heir when he was all of nine years old. He'd never known anything outside of this, though, perhaps he'd seen different dynamics in foreign Packs over the years.

But, lately, he'd begun watching as Talia's children wove themselves together with something like tenacity and piano-wire. Yes, Laura was their leader, but she was also an older sister, a bit of a mother, a friend, and as much as they were with her, they also didn't let her get too full of herself, held her back when she might act the fool, and she _listened_ , respected, understood and was nothing less than _grateful_. Derek and Stiles tended to be the most outspoken with their advice and their concerns, though they both approached perceived problems in very different ways; Derek was quiet and cautious where Stiles was vivacious and brash, not to mention Stiles' skill in this was... less than refined (eleven, Peter often had to remind himself, awe at his maturity warring with disappointment at his impetuousness, he's only eleven). Philip kept them grounded, kept paranoia and fear from running rampant, was the one, Peter could tell, who persuaded them to keep on living despite the fractures in their security, as much as he subtly made sure they minded the fact that they _were_ there. Scott and the twins listened, questioned, prepared, filled in whatever gaps in strategy the rest might not've covered, and, depending on the mood of the day, begged after gentler or more ferocious approaches.

He'd caught glimpses of it here and there, but the point is driven home to him, now, in this room that they make their own just by filling it.

It was Laura getting them all training with Le'Mabh and Digsvestya that cinched it, turned theory into mostly solid fact in his mind, and he'd waited, after, until he had a piece of information they'd want or need and have no other way of getting without giving away what they were, what they'd _become._

See, the thing is, he's used to needing to manipulate and bargain to get the things he wants, and he _does_ want this. There is a fire of hope burning in his belly, for his dear niece and the type of Alpha she could be.

Because, if he is right, she noticed the truth of the storms brewing on the horizon almost before he did.

Because, where her mother was so certain keeping them in the dark and pushing them to strive for an independence that _might_ be helpful in the long run, but, as Pack animals, was not only inconvenient in the short term, but quite possibly detrimental on the whole—Laura was pursuing a cohesive sort of togetherness, inclusive, honestly communicative, _protective_ , and altogether more prepared for the war that was most probably headed their way.

Because the way she is when it comes to Pack is... kinder, perhaps? Stronger, certainly. Strange, novel, and something in him is telling him this is what it _should_ be like, is telling him to catch the threads of it and dig his nails in before he loses his chance.

Because part of him is honestly wishing that _coup_ is _exactly_ what this is, part of him thinks having his niece as his Alpha would grate _far_ less than having his sister, part of him thinks submitting to her, instead, wouldn't just be easier, it'd be... _powerful_.

Better, in ways he doesn't even think he fully understands yet.

"Laura?" Derek wonders, wary eyes on Peter, eyebrows raised.

She huffs a groaning sigh, "He wants to bribe his way into our little 'babysitter bookclub' with information, his words, not mine." Her eyes darken, the levity leeching from her tone, "He told me some, already, and it's nothing I could get mom to tell me on my own, but it's... important. It's important, and I think it'd be a hell of a lot better if we knew, so."

Philip folds his hands on his stomach, says, almost thoughtful, as if he isn't invested, as if Peter can't see the fierceness in his eyes plain as day, "Babysitter bookclub is surprisingly accurate, honestly."

Stiles says, "You didn't even need the bribe."

"What?"

"We were going to recruit you, anyway," he clarifies. "I mean, the information is nice, so, thanks for deciding to share, but you've been the topic of conversation for, like, three meetings, and bringing you in was kind of a unanimous vote, so the bribe is a little redundant."

Derek's lips quirk, his eyes glowing with wry amusement, "You're the _Left Hand,"_ he says. "I don't think any of us knew what that meant until Stiles started researching it and asking questions—" "Don't ever play werewolf trivia with him," Laura cuts in with a shiver, "he's _ruthless."_

"You're the Pack's politician, strategist, warrior," Derek continues.

"You're basically a knight errant," Stiles snorts.

"Which is _awesome_ , and I resent not being told sooner," Gabriel says. "I also demand stories. I feel like I've been cheated."

"Yeah!" Cora says, glaring furiously, which is as good as pouting for her. "Like, you could've totally helped us dye Jackson's hair blue without getting caught, huh? With all your stupid _'expertise'."_

"He also might help us _not get dead,"_ Scott says, with feeling, like this is a very important fact they should all be paying attention to (to be fair, it absolutely is).

Philip flaps a hand in Scott's direction, "Point."

"We need you, is what we're saying," Laura concludes, laughter tinting her tone, happy despite the seriousness of what they all know this is leading up to. "So, it's a good thing you came to us, because their plan to convince you to our side was absolutely ridiculous."

"It was not!" Gabe objects, before throwing a pillow at her that she catches and tosses back nonchalantly, sticking her tongue out at him. He flips her off in return, and she yelps.

"Hey! You're too young to be doing shit like that!"

"And we're all too young to be so worried about our mortality," Stiles points out dryly, snatching the pillow from Gabriel, setting it down behind him, and beckoning Derek over. (Peter isn't even surprised by how quickly the older boy complies, it had only really taken a week for them _all_ to get used to just how wrapped around Stiles' little finger Derek is. He wonders if the two of them even realize it.) "Yet, here we are."

Philip claps his hands together dramatically, quietening them all and calling attention to the matter at hand. "So," he says, and lifts his hands toward Peter like an invitation, "storytime."

(This, Peter's wolf purrs, _this._

This is what Pack feels like.

 _Acceptance._ )

Peter, feeling appallingly flattered and disgustingly pleased, collects himself in mere moments, and begins to lay Deucalion's sins at their feet. _Here is an Alpha who massacred his Pack,_ he says, _here is an Alpha who persuaded others to do the same. And the scariest part is that they are the **least** of our concerns._

* * *

The strangest thing, and, perhaps, the most marvelous, is how easily they gather him into the fold.

Stiles asks questions, rapid-fire, unceasing, and, some, perplexing enough that Peter actually has to go looking for the answers on his own dime. Then he _listens_ , drinks in all the information like he's starving for it, and like he would never question it.

Cora and Gabriel want his opinions and advice on pranks, and on how to talk to humans without coming off like, well, little werewolf children who'd bite their heads off given half the chance.

Scott has a very long, slightly arduous, oddly emotionally bonding conversation with him about what it might mean to take the Bite when he's older, and if there are any supernatural means other than that to help him with his asthma, if, beyond fighting, there's anything more he can do to protect the Hales, himself and his mother, and Stiles and Stiles' father, all.

Derek begins coming to him for book recommendations, asks after becoming a librarian, or if, at least, Peter has any connections that would allow him to work in the library again. Surprisingly, in a soft, vaguely vulnerable tone, he wonders if Peter would be willing to, occasionally, accompany Connor to his AA meetings and look in on one Noah Stilinski, Stiles' father. Denying the request is impossible, and the way Derek brightens, quietly grateful and so exceptionally relieved, makes it more than worth it.

Philip starts sharing candy with him and, randomly, when the mood strikes, following him around as he does various errands, before randomly disappearing to who knows where. Rather like a cat, that one.

Laura comes to him, in the middle of the night, sometimes, frazzled and unmoored and mildly exasperated, pacing and ranting and frustrated by Talia, disquieted, insecure about the position she's finding herself in, in turns. She leans on him, relies on him, confesses worries and fears she feels too pressured, too responsible, to voice to anyone else, prays for council and is utterly grateful when she receives it, stubborn and willing to debate every point to exhaustion, but reasonable, and always inevitably pleased with the outcome of their conversations.

They flock around him, and are tactile in a way he's never experienced before, hugging and scenting and constantly invading his space.

It's at the same time he realizes he's practically drenched in their scent, he's been without a moment to himself since that initial meeting, and he's essentially become the only responsible adult they actually trust, that he realizes he has seven solid, blinding, inexorable packbonds curled in the depths of his heart, and, where the strained leads to the rest of his Pack are soft, dim things, these _sing_ , they tuck themselves in deep and make his soul _home._

It is a wonder, of a kind, to learn what it is to be whole after so long living, surviving, _incomplete_.

He would raze the earth, he thinks, destroy the entirety of the known universe, if it meant keeping this.

* * *

Later, Derek will remember how his avoidance of a new relationship so soon after Paige, and how busied he was with training and with the kids had kept him from returning, or even _wanting_ , the attentions of the flirtatious dirty-blonde waitress whose frustration with his turning her down got exceedingly creepy when you considered exactly how old she was, until he began actively avoiding her.

Until he- and Stiles, who had witnessed her pushing too far, and had been even more disgusted by the behavior than he was- began complaining to _everyone else_ about how creepy she was, and they all decided Stiles' little dive was better, anyway.

And he will discover exactly who Kate Argent is, and exactly what she was doing, and he'll realize just how godsdamned _lucky_ they were.

But, now, all he knows is Laura's trembling, _terrified but trying with everything she has to hold it together_ voice as she shakes him awake; all he knows is his mother's Alphan howl-wrecked growl-grit commands to get the little ones and go _down;_ all he knows is the shell-shocked, weeping cries of the twins as they're dragged from their beds and begin to realize what's happening; all he knows is a fire that burns too hot and too fast, the aconite smoke festering in their lungs as they clamor down stairs they almost never used, to the cellar beneath the basement-library, to the tunnels lower still.

And, in the bowels of the earth, they _ran_. The ring of mountain ash laid around the house didn't account for iron valleys so far down, and though the odd rush of fire tried to follow them, even with numb-sting lungs, even with tears in their eyes and the evidence of what they'd just escaped from on their soot-sodden skin, they were faster than the flames.

It takes _hours_.

All of them are coughing, stumbling, exhausted, shocky, wrung-out and a level so far beyond _stressed_ that they've reached some kind of haunted oblivion by the time they reach the end, and are able to climb up out of the essential gutter. Their escape route lands them straight into Satomi's territory, which is good, both because she offers them sanctuary without blinking and because _Cahya_ is there. It does them all some good to see Laura reunite with her soulmate after their harrowing journey, and he hopes it'll help Laura get through this, as much as anything can help them get through this.

His head is all fogged, white-noise and the crackling hiss of a sudden, startling, fear-inducing yellow-orange liquid-gold maw. It's Peter who drags him away from watching Laura fall apart in Cahya's arms, and Derek knows he's talking, but he can't hear over the-the—

His Uncle takes him to a room, and he feels the twins press close even as the world dulls with a film of psychosomatic smoke, his skin too hot and too cold by turns, his wolf, his _soul_ , unleashing a warbling howl of devastation, and he doesn't even realize that he didn't have the presence of mind to contain it until he hears the twins join him in wolfsong, Peter's voice, deeper, more sonorous, lifting up with theirs soon after.

Laura and Cahya come next, then Philip, and soon the whole of their Pack, and not a small amount of Satomi's. A little choir of grief and expelled terror.

 _Too close_ , a distant part of him whispers, horrified, daunted, _that was far too close._

* * *

"We're leaving," Talia decides for them, for all of them, "it's too dangerous to stay, we have to go."

"But what about Stiles! What about Scott! They're Pack, too!" The twins cry, rage.

And Talia tells them, "No, they aren't. I know they're your friends, my loves, but that isn't the same thing. And it would be worse for them if we did stay; we're being targeted, pups, if the hunters saw weakness in us through them, they'd only get hurt. You don't want that, do you?"

"Mom, we could fight back, we could _try_. We have a duty to this place, to Beacon Hills, _you_ taught us that," Laura says, all red-rimmed eyes and useless persuasion.

"Well, Beacon Hills has forsaken us, have you seen the papers? The Argents threw us under the bus as pariahs, and they're _buying_ it. We have to go. We're going. That's final."

The twins scream their frustration at her and storm toward Peter, clinging to his legs and barely stifling their sobs. Philip looks, for the first time, truly grim, strained, like he doesn't like what she's proposing either, but he has no answer for it, no clever, lackadaisacal retort that could stop this from happening.

They're leaving, and that's all. Full stop.

"We can't even say goodbye?" Derek wonders, a desperate kind of despair hollowing him out, tears running unchecked down his fever-hot cheeks.

"No," she says, not unkindly. "And we can't contact them once we get to wherever we're going, either. We're quitting this place, and we're letting them go, for their own safety, if nothing else. I'm sorry."

Cahya, of course, must make her goodbyes with her Pack. She would never let her soulmate leave without her, and Derek's happy for Laura in a way, he _is_.

But his envy has sharp, jagged edges, and the seed of resentment he's got for his mother only grows roots for this.

In the morning, with arson and scandal on their heels, the Hales disappear from Beacon Hills without a word, without a trace.

They _vanish._

And, unwittingly, they leave a Nemeton, an Alpha Pack, a budding Darach, an unmoored Emissary, and two packmates in their wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Irish :: Deartháir Beag = little/baby brother
> 
> A stóirín - my little treasure
> 
> Deirfiúr Bheag = little/baby sister
> 
> Laoch Bídeach - little warrior


	2. Legends

During their time in New York, they'd heard _stories_.

They'd heard about children protecting an entire town. Some of the whispers held contempt, while others held admiration.

First, a werewolf with True Alpha potential was Bitten. The whispers were unclear as to why or how, or, even, how the word spread in the first place, and, at the time, nearly everyone thought it was a silly, trumped up fairytale. It'd been so long since a True Alpha had been made, there was no reason to think them much beyond history faded almost to myth.

Then, a Rogue Alpha, taken care of by a Pack of five. It was said that the Pack consisted of a Beta fresh off his second fullmoon, three more newly Bitten, and a boy that some thought, astounded, might just have been human.

Stories told of a Kanima, next, and of a Banshee more powerful than anyone had seen in nine centuries. The Pack now had two hunters on their side, and, if rumors were to be believed, had managed to return the identity and free will of the Kanima to it on the edge of a Banshee's scream, the salvaged claws of the dead Alpha that had Bitten it, and the bright, terrifying burst of power that came from a newly awakened Spark.

Considering how terribly rare Sparks were, the fact that making a Kanima a veritable Pack animal with its' volition in tact had never before been done, that hunters working with supernatural creatures of any kind was near to unheard of, and that the Banshee they had obtained was so bone-searingly _powerful_ , the whispers were _loud_ for a long while, and very focused.

Until this Pack of children in Beacon Hills defeated a Darach, awakened a Nemeton, and gave birth to a True Alpha all in the same day. Then, the whispers _shrieked,_ and everyone who lived the life of a nomad, or who wanted a piece of the glory for themselves, or who were just plain curious, began to follow the breadcrumbs, all of them, in one way or another, _hungry_.

Only, five months later, there was a big ado about a _demon_ , about chaos and death and destruction, and most of those headed for Beacon Hills all at once decided that, perhaps, living so close to something as dangerous as an active Nemeton, and a Pack so vastly out of their league that they attracted such horrors beyond believing, just wasn't fucking worth it.

So, yes, the McCall Pack was legendary.

But, as all legends, they were as brutal as they were beautiful, as terrific as they were terrifying, and if you ever wanted to be close to something so big and bright as that, you'd damn well better have the stomach for it.

Or else, a very good reason. Like, say, that the mass murdering monster who'd killed your parents had decided to head to a place you'd been forced to leave behind a long, long time ago, the cause of a homesick ache that seemed to live forever in your chest, and brimming with people you still missed with everything that you were.

And, so, after seven years, the remaining Hales return to Beacon Hills, wondering how many, if any, of the stories are true, wondering how much of the blame falls on them for leaving, and wondering, hopelessly, if they'll ever be forgiven for having left.

* * *

Stiles sees a swathe of vivid scarlet run down Boyd's arm as he tucks himself behind a tree to furiously text their group-chat, because _of course_ , of course Scott and Allison, and Lydia and Jackson would choose _today_ of all days to have a double date.

"I swear to god," he hisses at his phone, "if you guys are _bowling_ or some _stupid_ shit like that while we're dealing with a group of dagger wielding high priestesses, I. Am. Going. To. _Kill_. You."

Erica, sweating, rounds the tree next to him with a hitched pant and pulls a silver dagger out of her arm like it's fucking nothing. Stiles looks at her, horrified, because, "That is _so gross,_ man," and she flashes him an altogether too bloody grin as she tosses the viscera coated thing into the foliage far enough away that it shouldn't be a problem anymore.

"Heh, well," she shrugs, wipes gooey blood from her arm, laughing pantingly. "You get ahold of our Alpha yet?"

"Or, literally _anyone?"_ Isaac calls from somewhere vaguely behind them, where he's being grappled by one of the witch-priestess ladies.

"Nope," he says, clicking his phone off and shoving it into his pocket, "we're currently down two power couples and one of the only dudes impervious to any kind of poison, so."

Erica lunges down, catching a snake from where it had hidden among the mire and slashing it to shreds before it even has a _chance_ to think about biting into Stiles' squishy flesh, for which he is extremely grateful.

"Thanks," he says, a little impressed.

"No problem, magic man," she tells him, beaming a little, covered in the blood of her enemies and flashing too many teeth. She bears a passing resemblance to pretty much every warrior goddess he can think of, in that moment, and he tries not to find it too ironic, considering.

"So, we're screwed, basically?" Isaac asks, breathless, as he rolls away from the priestess and ducks when another comes up behind him, slashing. He curses feelingly before clawing at the one in front's ankles, hobbling her, and Erica takes the opportunity to twirl out of cover in order to capture the woman in a whirlwind of claws and snarling teeth, the other priestess throws a dagger her way, spelling it into a snake as its' airborne, before Isaac can catch her by the midsection and throw her to the ground, and Stiles releases his rowan ravens from their place just beneath his skin, heaving a sigh of relief when they capture the snake in their talons and begin tearing into it with their beaks.

Steeling himself, he returns to the fray, wielding a barbed whip that he helpfully sweeps at a priestess trying to grapple Boyd's arms and hold him still so that one of her sisters can kill him. She shrieks as it winds across her back, the shock of it making her recoil and, subsequently, let Boyd go. Stiles' ravens dive for her eyes as Boyd goes at the throat of the woman in front of him with his fangs, simultaneously digging his claws into her gut so that he can throw her bleeding-out corpse over his head (which Stiles has to dodge, thank you) and dive toward the ginormous serpentine thing that's headed toward where Erica's holding a writhing, half-foaming-out-the-mouth Isaac.

"Stiles!" Erica yells, the tremor in her voice one part actual fear and four parts physical exertion.

"Shit," Stiles grits, slinging his whip around the arm of one of the women trying to corner him and ignoring the screech that tears its' way out of her throat as he nearly shreds the limb off when he yanks her out of the way so that he can rush (narrowly avoiding a dagger in the process) toward Isaac. "What happened?"

"A snake?" Erica pants out, a frustrated growl resounding in her chest as she springs up and away from her seizing packmate so that she can protect them from the snakes and the priestesses that are circling while Stiles tries to tend to him. "I didn't see, I don't know."

There's a grunt in the distance as Boyd finally puts down the behemoth snake, and leaps toward the priestess trying to take advantage of the gap in Erica's defence.

Then, ominously, the big kahuna high priestess, the one who all the others are protecting as she mixes blood and entrails and runes on a stone slab altar that she's carved with intricate arrays, begins to _cackle_.

"Oh, that's not good," Stiles mourns, at her glee and at the black ichor oozing from the puncture wounds in Isaac's leg, both. The earth begins to rumble threateningly, a roaring hiss sounding out from up above, and lo and behold, they've summoned Quetzalcoatl. Or, at least, they think they have, Stiles has it on good authority they don't have enough mojo to actually summon a _God_ , but they've summoned a _gigantic, feathered, winged serpent_ , anyway. "Oh, that's _very_ not good."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Erica hisses furiously, the priestesses and other snakes in the clearing as distracted as they are, for now, by the huge snake that's rising, rising, spreading his wings and, with the help of a few trees, essentially blotting out half of the sky. That thing is _huge._ "Are you fucking _kidding_ me?!"

The winged serpent roars, venom oozing down from its' fangs, and the earth beneath them shakes, the drops of poison splashing, sizzling, and creating tiny little acidic craters of gnarled ground wherever they land.

"No," Stiles says faintly, as the thing regards them all with gleaming yellow eyes the size of their bodies, and the priestesses fall to their knees with cries of glee. "No, I don't think kidding is anywhere _near_ where we are."

Isaac, who's finally calmed from his initial reaction, and is now being subjected to runes of healing being gouged into his skin with Stiles' knife- a dainty, refined thing, meant more for this than for fighting- gurgles a blood-soaked laugh and says, "I think I hear the cavalry."

And not ten seconds later, Jackson's porsche is careening through the Preserve and into their little battlefield, and Stiles chokes on a laugh as, all at once, the Kanima slinks out of the car to hunt down all the snakes, Scotty charges forward, all zinging claws and Alpha roar to start dealing with the hulking, winged serpent, Allison breezily begins shooting down priestesses from her perch, hanging halfway out of the car's window, and Lydia, complaining that she better not have any broken nails by the end of this, climbs on top of the car, and, in the general direction of the serpent, _screams_.

* * *

"I am so glad someone in-the-know owns this place," Stiles sighs happily as he shoves a handful of curly-fries in his mouth. They're all covered in mud and gore, tattered and dirty and sporting various cuts (or, for the werewolves, various tears in clothing), worse for wear but _alive_. They also all look _very much_ like they just walked away from a bunch of dead snakes, giant snakes, a giant winged snake, and the women who conjured them all.

"I'm still surprised that caste doesn't consist of the whole town," Lydia says, spearing italian dressing-sprinkled salad on her fork, and Jackson, who's curled half into her lap, grumbles a little. Absently, she pets him, and he settles.

Scott's sat next to him, too busy mowing down on a triple-decker bacon cheeseburger to communicate like anything other than a monkey- not that Stiles blames him, taking down a godzilla-level dragon-snake's hungry work- Boyd's next to Scott, with Erica behind him, sitting on the back of their booth with her legs slung over his broad shoulders and his head pretty much in her lap, Lydia and Jackson are across from Stiles, Allison across from Scott, watching him devour his food with seriously sickening hearteyes and mother-henning Isaac who's passed out, drooling, on her shoulder.

"Is he okay?" Allison asks, for maybe the seventeenth time, and Stiles rolls his eyes, gulping down refreshingly-icy strawberry milkshake before answering, for probably the twentieth time:

"Yes, I stopped the venom from spreading, and I kept his healing-factor active while Huginn, Muninn, and I pulled the poison out. He's _fine_ , he's just drained."

"You cleaned those ravens before you let them back on you, right?" Lydia demands sharply, "I do _not_ want to deal with a recurrence of last time."

"Yes, yes, third time's the charm. I've learned my lesson, promise."

She narrows her eyes and he widens his innocently in turn, palms out in surrender.

"Okay," she finally acquiesces, "but if you keel over again..."

"We'll let you die," Jackson mumbles, yawns, continues, "of your own stupid stupidity."

"Stupid stupidity?" Stiles repeats, half mocking, half just laughing at him.

"Shaddup."

"Oi, kids," Digsvestya cuts in as comes up to their table, "we open in an hour, and clean up for this's gonna be a bitch an' a half."

"We're _eating,"_ Stiles whines.

"Yeah, well eat faster. You got school in a little while, an' if you miss another training session Le'Mabh'll have all your heads on a silver fuckin' platter, go'wan." He moves to slap Stiles upside the head with a dirty dish rag, which Stiles catches reflexively before it can hit him, only to be smacked on the forehead by a beefy, sudsy-smelling hand. "Still can't fuckin' dodge me, ya' cunt," he laughs, as he saunters back to the kitchen, calling over his shoulder, "Quick with you lot, or I'll throw you out a half hour 'till."

"Yeah, yeah!" Stiles calls back, aggrieved, rubbing his forehead.

"Oh-hoh, aww," Erica chuckles leaning over sideways to kiss his temple, "poor baby."

"Nah, he's fine," Scott says, but cups Stiles' cheeks and pulls him forward so he can smack his own greasy kiss onto the mark Dig left anyway. "Dig's right, though, clean up's _not_ gonna be fun. We can't just leave a-a-a-"

"It wasn't _technically_ 'a' Quetzalcoatl," Stiles begins to say, because it _wasn't_ , and Scott snaps his fingers.

"—a Quetzalcoatl and a horde of snakes and a coven of snake-ladies-" "High priestesses," Stiles corrects, because if Scotty's gonna pay attention to the _titles_ of things (even if they're evidently incorrect)- "in the middle of the Preserve to _rot._ People _camp_ out there."

"And police _patrol_ out there," Stiles says, grimacing at the memory of his father and a handful of deputies nearly getting drowned by a dozen overzealous selkies.

"And hikers hike," Lydia continues, because yeah, there was that one time...

"Bird watchers," Erica breathes fondly, and Stiles has no _earthly_ idea how she can remember _that_ fondly.

"Joggers," Jackson says, sibilantly, his scales still reluctant to recede, and, yeah, that guy had been an ungrateful, entitled douche-bag who'd called the cops on them claiming they all dragged him into the woods, drugged him with acid, and tried to have some weird orgy with him (they _were_ dealing with a black-widow type succubus at the time, Stiles can see how it could've been misconstrued); a simple drug test got them off the hook, thank god, but it still hadn't been fun for anyone involved, least of all Stiles' dad, who'd looked exasperated and a little rueful through the whole ordeal.

 _"Hunters,"_ Boyd says, grimly, snapping them all out of their little reveries.

"Yeah," Scott says, worn beyond his years, and Stiles squeezes his shoulder, Allison reaching across the table to take his hand in hers, both of them offering as much comfort as they're able, "hunters."

"So," Lydia decides, dabbing the corners of her mouth with a napkin, tossing the trash onto her cleared plate when she's done with an air of finality, "let's get this over with before first period."

They all groan and whine and protest as they move to get up and leave the Diner, all with the exception of Scott, who's much more good-humored about this sort of thing, and Lydia, who's just ruthlessly pragmatic, when it comes down to it.

* * *

Stiles wonders, sometimes, if it's because of their links to the supernatural, or if it's because, maybe, the Fates want to offer a little kindness after all the _shit_ they've been put through, that most of the McCall Pack have met their soulmate, can see all the colors the world has to offer.

For Scott, it was Allison, which was pretty awkward for Chris and a bit of a running gag, until... well, until.

For Isaac and Erica, both, it was Boyd, and Boyd refuses to tell anyone outside of the Pack who 'gave him color', but they've all heard the story maybe a thousand times. Once from Boyd, himself, and every subsequent retelling from Erica. Erica gave him the morning and the trees, is what he'd said, and Isaac gave him the night and his Nana's eyes, two spectrums of color, given to him at separate times, from the two people he loves most in the world.

Lydia and Jackson are still achromatic, but it's pretty obvious how much they love each other, and Stiles has very little doubt that when and if they find the person who grants them a new interpretation of vision, they'll figure out a way to make polyamory work, and if their soulmates are anything like them, well... it'll be a relationship that goes down in history, probably.

For Stiles... well.

Scott's the only one who knows about Derek, about that whole... _clusterfuck_. They'd held each other and _wept_ when their first Pack abandoned them, both of them wracked with not only the emotional, but _spiritual_ pain of it. They'd had no idea they were suffering from fractured, snapping packbonds, at the time, but Scott had managed to recover quicker than Stiles, who'd also been going through withdrawal from his soulmate, and wondering, helplessly, hopelessly, if the fact that Derek had Macropia meant he wasn't going through this.

("I hope he is," Scott had said, a little viciously, as he pressed an icy washcloth to Stiles' feverish brow.

"No," Stiles had rasped, whimpered, shivered, swallowing the dry, _dry_ air. "No, it's better if he doesn't. Don't want him to-to feel this. Hurts."

And Scott's face had crumpled as he tried to bring the fever down, Stiles' dad's phone close-by in case it got bad enough that he'd need to go to the hospital. Their parents had stayed home with them for the first few days, but the grief-sickness lasted nearly two months for Scott, nearly _five_ , for Stiles, and they both _had_ to work, whether they liked it or not.)

The rest of their Pack, with the exception of Lydia, have pretty much assumed that _he_ has Macropia, was born with color (and isn't that funny?), and has just been exceptionally good at hiding it. Their Banshee Queen, on the other hand, has insinuated several times that she _knows_ he has a soulmate he's keeping mum on, and has pried just enough to learn how viciously Stiles _doesn't_ want to talk about, or acknowledge it, and has since, mercifully, left well enough alone.

All of this gets, perhaps a little cruelly, he feels, thrown back into his life, turning everything on its' head for the third time since the Hales disappeared in the wake of fire and scandal, since Scott got Bitten by Deucalion, when the twins show up, transferred into their class.

Cora, with her same animal ferociousness, pouty mouth turned down and three shades away from a perpetual scowl, hazel eyes sharp and attentive, auburn hair tied up in a messy pony-tail that runs in fly-away waves down her back. Gabe by her side with his mop of fiery-chestnut curls hanging in spirals around his ears, familiar sour-apple gaze tucked behind decorative square-framed glasses, his lips ticking up into a fairly impish, cock-sure grin.

 _Cordelia and Gabriel Hale,_ the teacher introduces, and Stiles can't help but feel kind of sick.

* * *

Stiles... ditches.

He isn't exactly proud of it, but, he just. They'd looked like they wanted to talk to he and Scott, and Stiles, honestly, didn't think he could deal with it.

He knows, logically, that the Hales _had_ to leave, for their own safety, Satomi told them as much, after, and he knows that they didn't exactly have much choice, but it still _aches_. He can't help the cold bitterness that winds up his spine, dances tauntingly at the back of his throat, so he runs away.

Scott will deal with it, them, how he sees fit, and he trusts his brother not to do something so stupid as to fuck up their relations with the Pack that is still, technically, bonded with this land. For all that they've done and survived here, Beacon Hills is Hale territory, by blood rites and Old, wild magic, the likes of which would be very, _very_ hard to defy. If the Hale Alpha or Emissary ever decided to banish them, well. It wouldn't be pretty.

And Scott knows that.

Scott's also got more of a forgiving nature, most days, and he loved the twins more than Stiles ever did.

"What on earth are ya' doin'?" Dig asks him roughly when Stiles meanders his way into the back of the Diner, letting the hubbub of the kitchen in full-swing wash over him as he sidles up to the craggly wall of scottish muscle. "School hours ain't over yet, an' las' time you got it in y'er head to skip, y'er fa' came here firs' thing an' then blabbed to Le'Mabh that I'd let you. Las' thing I want is an earful from my old lady about the _importance of childhood education._ A woman scorned is a frightful thing. A woman on a war-path is no less, trust me."

"Oh, I know," Stiles chuckles softly, "I've been on the other side of those rants, man, your wife's seriously terrifying."

"An' y'er fa'll use that to his advantage, so you best get back to y'er learnin' tower, li'l shepherd."

Stiles snorts, fidgets. "The Hales are back in town."

Digsvestya stills, gives him one long, searching look, and then yanks off his hairnet, unleashing a shock of bright orangey-red frizz as he steps away from the stove with a sigh. "Y'er on duty, then, li'l shepherd; keep 'em in line, ya' hear me? An' don't lose yourself too long, won't do ya' any good to hide forever."

"Thanks, Dig," Stiles says, taking up his station with the ease of practice and learned confidence.

"Shepherd's goin' King," Dig hollers out to the crowd of workers in a voice loud enough to split eardrums, as he clamps a hand on Stiles' shoulder. "If I find any a' ya' arseholes didn't bow down an' follow his lead, I'll fuckin' feed ya' to the Dragon, heard?"

A chaotic clamor of voices ring out droll 'heard's and 'aye's, the veteran workers long since used to this, by now, and the newbies learning quickly.

Dig leans down, pressing his forehead against Stiles' temple and holding the side of his head with his free hand, the other squeezing down, a reassuring anchor, on Stiles' shoulder. He always feels consumed by Dig's presence like this, cradled, _safe_.

It's an odd feeling to have, considering the life they lead, and the fact that Dig is, quite possibly, one of the deadliest people he knows (and he knows _werewolves_ , lots of them).

"Must have a soft spot the size of the moon for you, kid," he says, as aggrieved by it as he is fond, and Stiles grins.

"Not the size of the sun? Damn," he tuts, "must be losin' my spark."

"Ain't lost nothin' yet, ya' cunt," Dig laughs, grinding his forehead against Stiles' skull to the point of pain before drawing away, dragging his knuckles along Stiles' head as he goes, making him wince and swat the man away. "Long may you reign," he says, turning to head out.

"Oh, fuck off," Stiles yells at his retreating back, "you only ever let me wear the crown for an hour!"

Dig flips him off and disappears out the door with a cigarette in his mouth and a smile in his eyes.

"Doin' alright, there, kid?" Echo asks when she comes to the window, just a little breathless, to take the orders for table seven.

"He's king right now," Skylar tells her, as they place another finished order on the sill.

"Boy king," she says, sunshine sewn into her tone.

"You guys suck," he tells them earnestly, "and I've got fuckin' burgers to fry so you can both fuck _right_ off."

"Aww," she coos, "he's in a bad mood, isn't he?"

"Must be, must be," Skylar says, before turning back to the kitchen and yelling, "The boy king's in a bad mood, watch your necks, he's like to chop off your head if you aren't careful!"

"I'll chop off _your_ head," Stiles growls playfully, making to lunge at them, but they spin away and back to their station with a cackle, and Stiles subsides, smile tugging at his lips and light billowing through the shadows trying to spider their way around his heart.

* * *

Gabe's waiting outside of Le'Mabh's studio when Stiles finally gets there, thirteen minutes late, already, because Echo got hit with a case of seriously startling contractions close to the end of her shift, and Stiles, as one of the only people with a car who doesn't mind turning a forty minute drive into a fifteen minute one through seriously dubious means, had ended up hustling her to the hospital.

Turned out it was just braxton-hicks, but he'd still told her, when all was said and done and Taliesin had finally gotten there to hold his fiancee's hand, "I wish you didn't have to work so hard when you're ready to pop any second now."

And she'd laughed, only a little hysterically, "Ah, well. You know how it is, Stiles."

"A bit," he'd admitted, kissing the top of her head and walking backward to tell Tal, "You look after her, Dumbo," before turning to rush out of the hospital, ignoring Tal's indignant squawking about how his ears were _not_ that big.

And, now, he's faced with Gabriel, leaning lazily against the brick wall directly next to the back door that Stiles normally uses to go inside, and Stiles seriously contemplates using the front door instead for a solid three minutes. Gabe just stays there, hands in his pockets, ankles crossed, watching him sit inside Roscoe, deliberating, with slightly narrowed eyes.

"I can see you, you know," the other boy eventually calls, and Stiles' hands tighten where they have yet to leave the steering wheel.

"I know! Shut up, I'm thinking."

Gabriel makes a noncommittal sound with a shrugging tilt of his head. "Fair," he says, and three more minutes of indecisive contemplation pass before Gabriel pulls out a pack of cigarettes, slips one into his mouth, lights it, puts the pack and the lighter away, takes a long, slow puff, exhales the smoke deliberately, languidly, like he's savoring it, before he calls out, "Still thinking?"

Stiles bangs his forehead on the steering wheel a few times, sighs, and leaves the car, walking toward Gabriel with a scowl, coming to a stop in front of him and crossing his arms over his chest. "Those are horrible for you."

Gabriel takes a drag, waggling his eyebrows impishly, before exhaling it in a perfect ring around Stiles' face and smirking, "Werewolf. I'll be fine."

"You're seventeen."

"Only for two more months."

"And?"

"And I don't think my vices are what you really want to be ragging on me for, Stiles," Gabriel says, sighing, the levity suddenly drained from his voice. "You ditched _literally_ the second you saw us."

"Yeah, well," Stiles shrugs, because, honestly, what did they expect. A very big fan of ignoring all the problems until they're actively trying to kill you and you _have_ to pay attention to them, for pure survival's sake, he asks, "Where's Cora?"

"Inside," Gabriel tells him, hooking a thumb over his shoulder toward the door as he takes another pull. Stiles shifts away slightly, trying to avoid the smoke as much as he's trying to avoid everything else. "We spoke with your Pack, asked Scott if we could stay in your territory for a while as our Pack's official envoys. He and everyone else seemed amenable, but they all said you were the deciding factor, and, considering your reaction to us..." He huffs, "Cora was feeling frustrated, and one of yours, Erica, said she'd help her blow off some steam."

Stiles' brow furrows. Silently, he wonders if they realize that they don't have to ask for a formal invitation at all, this land's still theirs, bottom-line, even if it seems a little unfair, considering. If they _do_ realize that, then what they're doing now is more courtesy than anything, and even if they were denied, the only thing staying would be is _rude_ , by human standards. By 'were standards, denying the Hales harbor would be tantamount to issuing a challenge for their land.

Stiles sweeps over, so he can sit on the milk-carton beside Gabe and look out across the parking lot to the neighboring antiques' shop. "If we said no, what would you guys do?"

Gabriel shoots him a bit of a sideways look, and answers quietly, "We'd leave, Stiles."

"Why?"

Gabriel quirks his lips to the side, putting his cigarette out on the bottom of his shoe and tossing the butt into a dumpster nearby (though it's far enough away that Stiles still whistles appreciatively when the butt actually makes it in), "Because you're our friends. You guys... you guys were Pack, once, and that _means_ something. Maybe not to you, maybe not anymore, but to us?" He shakes his head and rubs behind his ear, nails clicking against the hook of his glasses. "If you told us you didn't want us here, it would hurt, but we'd go."

Stiles sighs heavily and cradles his head in his hands, suddenly feeling exhausted. "Don't go," he says, and there's some too-young, too-lonely, abandoned and wounded part of him that bubbles up, sews fragments of seven-years-past desperation into his voice. "I don't want you guys to fucking leave," it's a little rough, but he can't seem to help it, the shadows in the depths of his soul keen at him to start counting his fingers, and it takes all he has to ignore them. "But if you're coming home, if you're going to be here, you have to stay. You have to stay and you have to promise that if you ever do leave again, you'll... _say_ something. That's—. That's the only condition I have."

His lungs are constricting, heart alight with the kind of soul-deep stinging burn that begs at you to just fucking _cry_. Jesus, he feels all of eleven again, immature and selfish and goddamned needy.

"Okay," Gabriel murmurs, sounding a little uneven, kind of off-kilter. "Yeah, okay, we—. We can do that."

Stiles scrubs his hands over his face, trying to get rid of the evidence of whatever tears did manage to fall, even though he knows Gabriel can probably smell them, anyway. He stands and knocks his knuckles to the wall thrice, hard. There's a satisfying amount of loud clanging from somewhere within the depths of the building, and Stiles huffs a watery laugh. "You got all that Scotty-boy?"

"Yes!" Comes his brother's yelp, followed shortly by Le'Mabh's, "Now, if you're all done eavesdropping would you _pay a-fucking-ttention?"_

"Ow!" He hears Jackson cry, and snorts as he turns to Gabe, sniffles, tries not to let the way his long-lost friend's face is full of sorrow-stained fragility tug at his heartstrings.

He says, "Welcome home."

And Gabriel, all red-rimmed eyes and terribly-hidden grief, laughs.

The rest of the day is spent training, sparring, and trading war stories. Granted, they focus a little more on the twins' 'war stories' in their catching up, keeping to their more campy monsters of the week instead of the, you know, generally devastating big bads that none of them like to talk about. But their Pack seems to enjoy getting to know more about the family that, to them, is a little legendary, since they've all heard Stiles and Scott, in rare moments of nostalgia and indulgence, reminisce about the Hales, where the twins seem to enjoy getting to know the Pack that's made such a big splash in the supernatural world, the Pack that their old childhood friends 'built from the ground up,' if you will, and Le'Mabh is exasperatedly aggrieved that they're all talking more than they're working, but Stiles can tell she's playing it up, a secret, pleased smile in her eyes that they're all gathered in her gym, getting along.

She'd missed them, too, he knows.

At one point, Cora says, gruff, "So is everything true?"

"What do you mean?" Scott asks with a cheerful smile as he, almost nonchalantly, flips Erica over his shoulder, and pins Isaac to the mat, Le'Mabh calling out better tactics and better forms in the background.

"Like, you know. Are you a True Alpha? Do you really have a Kanima, a Banshee, _and_ a Spark in your Pack? Did you kill a demon? All that."

Well, she doesn't pull any punches, does she?

Stiles assumes the only reason she didn't ask if they'd _really_ activated the Nemeton is because they can feel the truth of that beneath their feet, the telluric currents crackling with overwhelming amounts of chaotic energy.

Scott's smile, to his credit, barely even dims, despite how everyone else in the room flinches or stumbles in their movements by at least a breath. "Yeah," he says, easy, even though it's anything but.

Gabriel tugs on a lock of his sister's hair and gives her a heavy look, she presses her lips together so hard they turn white, Stiles is extremely thankful that that, apparently, is the end of that.

(What he misses, however, is the little glances of dawning horror the twins keep trading, because even the low-level monsters they fight almost weekly and the destruction that comes with them- destruction they've long-since become desensitized to- are shocking and macabre, and that they can _laugh_ telling those stories, now, is both telling and worrying.

He misses, too, the way they recoil and flinch at the glimpses they get of his, Allison, and Lydia's scars, at the way they so flippantly talk about dying, about sacrificing themselves for this town like they aren't children, still, like it's their _duty_.

By the end of their reserved time in the gym, Gabriel and Cordelia Hale have sunk into a grim sort of guilt and self-loathing that they take home with them along with Stiles' condition for them staying and the assurance that, yes, the McCall Pack is quite possibly everything the stories said they would be, and more.)

* * *

Stiles' nightmares often recycle themselves.

Wash, rinse, relive the dread, over and over and over again.

Too many of them have started like this, seeing Derek again after so fucking long.

All of those ended with a flood of crimson and a rush of pain and Stiles screaming for Derek not to leave him, until, either, his soulmate's eyes glazed over in death, or Stiles choked on the sticky-wet taste of iron as void curtained the sight of Derek's back to him.

Stiles begins to count his fingers as discreetly as he is able and tries very, very hard not to hyperventilate.

Because there's his soulmate. Up a fucking tree. To fetch a crying little girl's _cat_. Wearing the Beacon Hills' Firefighter Station uniform shirt, bunker pants a vaguely sooty taxi-yellow, the matching jacket tied around his waist casually, a huge, beaming fucking smile on his face, even as the cat reacts to his werewolfiness the way any cat would. By shrieking and hissing and trying its' damndest to flay him with its' tiny little claws.

Derek just laughs, a deep-rich, terrifyingly bright sound, and Stiles can't explain why that makes him feel like running. It's too kind, too sweet, too soaked in sunshine for him to touch and it _hurts_.

How can that be his soulmate? How can that person, _that_ one, the one climbing down the tree and offering the kitty to the girl, ignoring the awful cliche of it, and, just, going soft and scrunch-sparkle stained-glass eyes when the girl hugs him, all childish glee and gratitude—how can that be his soulmate?

Only, technically, he isn't, is he? Or, at least, Stiles isn't _Derek's_ soulmate.

Which is... yeah. That's good. That's destiny doing right by a good man who doesn't deserve the damaged, fucked up mess that is Stiles.

Forcing himself to breathe, Stiles turns, ticking his fingers off against his leg, _ten, I have ten, this isn't a dream, the little girl isn't going to suddenly turn into a monster and make flags of Derek's entrails, no, she is not,_ and deciding, ruthlessly, never to come within two blocks of this fucking Fire Station again. Fuck Heilansa's Books and Knick-Knacks, fuck it to hell, fuck it straight to goddamn, motherfucking—

"Stiles?"

Ah, well.

Shit.

"Derek," Stiles says, but he doesn't stop or turn toward him, just keeps walking away with purposeful strides, hoping rather lamely that Derek will take the hint.

He does not.

He jogs up to Stiles' side and falls into step with him as naturally as if they'd been doing it for years. As if seven years of absence were nothing, as if, before those seven years, they hadn't known each other for barely enough time to get as attached as they inevitably did.

Derek takes a breath like he's about to say something, and Stiles stops walking altogether.

"Why'd you guys come back?" He asks, because he's been wondering it for awhile and because he doesn't want to hear (is vaguely terrified to hear) whatever Derek has to say, both.

Derek stills a pace ahead of him, not having expected him to stop, and shifts, a little uncomfortable, rubbing the back of his neck as he turns to look at Stiles with those really, really unfairly gorgeous eyes of his. God, Stiles has had color ever since this dork fucking touched him, and he's still never seen anything comparable.

An aurora plucked from the sky and planted in those eyes.

There's a quiet kind of grief, a shadowed guilt and pain in the shadows of that ethereality, though, that makes Stiles' heart clench.

Derek clears his throat softly, "There was this... woman. She killed mom, dad, and then she came here, we think."

"Oh," Stiles breathes, something heavy wrapping around his heart and tugging it down, down, down. He should not feel bitter that vengeance is their reason, that it isn't because their names were finally cleared for the fire, it isn't because they could come home without being persecuted or harmed for it, that it's because yet another monster who's done horrible, horrible things, decided to come here.

All the monsters come here, eventually.

 _You're one of them,_ jagged-sharp ghosts whisper within him, _you're one of the **worst** of them._

"And after... after you take care of that? What then?"

Derek regards him carefully, brows furrowing slightly, and, softly, says, "The twins said you wanted us to stay."

Stiles doesn't dignify that with a response, looks down instead, ignores how goosebumps prickle at how intense Derek's focus on him is.

"And we have no reason to leave," Derek finally continues, after a moment or an eternity of silence, of Derek just watching him as Stiles tried to differentiate every grain on the sidewalk. "Beacon Hills has always been home."

_Then why'd you leave?_

Because of hunters and inescapable circumstances, Stiles knows, he _knows_ , but it still takes biting his tongue until he tastes blood not to ask.

Quietly, a little solicitous, "Stiles?"

"Good," he says, because it's all he can think to say, and, then, because he's impulsive at the best of times, he strides forward the step it takes, knuckles under Derek's jaw and tilts forward to gentle a quick kiss to his cheek. "Welcome home."

There's a quick inhale of surprise that makes Stiles' heart flutter, then start skipping forward, helplessly.

And, then, he twists away with all the learned grace of every single battle he's ever fought, and sweeps away, barely containing the urge to run.

The colors of the world have _not_ become more vibrant, he tells himself viciously. They _haven't_.

* * *

Stiles is _different._

Derek had been expecting _older_ , when they first got back to Beacon Hills, and, after the twins had come home with vaguely troubling reads on the situation and their old friends, boys who used to be Pack, Derek started preparing himself for _been through hell_.

He hadn't prepared enough, he doesn't think.

Not for syrupy eyes to have been steeped in so much bitter, ground with the rinds of something dark and hidden behind walls that seemed to fracture the moment Derek looked at him. He's seen Stiles a few times, now, and every time he thinks he hates himself a little more for the fact that they left.

(And it's not just Stiles, is it? It's Scott, and it's this cobbled together Pack made up of traumatized kids who act half the time like they've forgetten what it is to fear death, forgotten what it is to live without perverbial knives at their throats.)

Stiles smells like he's spent the past hour at an outdoor cafe surrendering to a torrent of rain as the actual coffee house burnt down right next to him, like he found a rotting, mildewed rose, just so he could plant it in the sodden, ashen remains. Which is to say, he smells like _despair_.

And it is a constant thing. It lingers around him, around all of them, like a heavy cloud that they live with, have learned to reconcile and suffer under, so that they can keep pushing on, so that they can smile like it isn't tearing them up from the inside out.

He hadn't prepared for Stiles' habit of running away from his problems rearing it's ugly head around _him_. He remembers, after having met Stiles that first time, the boy suddenly seeming to be _everywhere_ , until he'd wiggled his way so deep into Derek's heart that he'd planted roots. Roots that had withered, crumbled to ashes the same as his old house seven years ago.

Now, Stiles is... mercurial, at best. A bird, fleeting and flighty and a tiny, hollow-boned, prey animal sort of fragility.

One moment, he's clinging to them, Derek, and the twins, and Laura, Peter, and Philip. (Which has been a bit of a blessing, because with Stiles comes the rest of the McCall Pack, and on the days when Stiles can barely go five seconds without touching them, holding them, hauling them closer- as if one second apart, one second without them in his line of sight, would mean them disappearing forever- he actively, unwittingly, manages to bridge every gap between one Pack and the other.

His utter terror of abandonment has left Derek wanting to whine, deep, and claw his way back in time just to rectify it more than once. He knows, from some of the looks he and his Pack have traded during days like these, that he's far from the only one.

And the guilt becomes thicker, harder to wade through.)

The next, he's playing magician, his disappearing act good enough that, sometimes, it takes _weeks_ before _any_ of the Hales see him again, let alone Derek. It helps none that they all know the two places he tends toward most- Dig's Diner and Beacon Hills' community library- he always, always, somehow manages to evade them.

He is, at once, the boy Derek remembers, and nothing like him at all. Or, him, scraped clean and raw and aching, until all he is is wound and sacrifice and hindered sorrow, well hidden behind frenetic vivaciousness and bright-brittle smiles.

* * *

Derek has, over the months, as they begin to flow past him, here, learned the list of things he can never bring up in front of the Pack that's taken up their old territory, protected it, held it and kept it as hale and whole and safe as they were able, and that, he's beginning to suspect, discarded their childhoods in the process.

Eichen House. (He never wants to scent the aftermath of that again, he never wants to see that ghost of bone-chilling terror lick up Stiles' spine, that hissing sneer on Lydia's face, as they both recoil and find different ways to run so they don't have to face whatever that place did to them, means to them, to make them react like that.)

Where Lydia goes on wednesday afternoons. (Derek made to follow her once, but Stiles had stopped him. Haunted, he'd said, "She's the most powerful Banshee to walk the earth, and all people do is die, in the end. Let her scream in peace, Der, give her that." _Let her keep her dignity,_ he hadn't said, but Derek could feel it swarming in the air around them, buzzing, stinging, _it's all we have left._ )

What Jackson's life was like pre-Pack, what it was to be a Kanima before he could control it, before he was Bonded to Scott. ("I was a bully, and then I was a slave, and now I go to therapy," he'd said, the one time Gabriel had asked, Derek close enough to eavesdrop. "And if you ever bring it up, again, I'll poke your eyes out with a fork and ask my girlfriend to pretty please set you on fire."

Lydia, without missing a beat, not even looking up from the book she was flipping through, had said, "It _has_ been a while since we've broken out the molotov cocktails, and I live to please."

"Considering the fair warning," Scott had chimed, beaming, "I wouldn't stop them."

While Stiles had, not ten seconds later, smacked Derek upside the head- rather softly- with his lacrosse stick, and glaringly asked, "Dude. Don't you have _work_ , or something? What the hell are you doing lurking at the edge of our field? If Finstock catches you, he'll call my _dad_. Realize, for me, please, how fucking awkward that would be."

And Derek had raised his eyebrows with a little shrug that was three parts unrepentant and two parts sarcastic. Stiles had considered him for a long moment, before sighing.

"You're just gonna hang out here being a total creeper until practice is over, aren't you?"

Derek had inclined his head, and Stiles had rolled his eyes at him, but, as always, whenever Derek decided to stay near on the days Stiles wasn't actively playing keep-away, his scent lifted a little, and Derek wondered if Stiles knew how big an incentive that was to keep close.)

Allison's dad, and the rumored demon, the Nogitsune. (All that Derek knows of Chris Argent is that he died half a year ago, his tragic end all wrapped up in the mysteries that surround a demon that even the most knowledgable peoples immersed in the supernatural say is next to impossible to kill. A demon that they _did_ kill, for all that it seems they lost Chris Argent, somehow turned just as much ally as his daughter, in the process, leaving Allison an emancipated orphan, and her Pack _grieving_.

The one time it had been brought up in passing, Stiles had had a very violent panic attack, worse than any he'd had when they were younger, and he'd disappeared into the depths of the library and Dig's kitchens for a little over two weeks, unwilling to speak with anyone, fleeing from the implication of touch or conversation or comfort.

When he'd finally resurfaced, Allison dragging him along behind her, he'd looked worn thin in every way imaginable, dead on his feet, lost, and devestatingly young, and she'd kept him near her, poking and prodding and generally _stubborning_ him into _taking fucking care of himself_.

Because he needed that, apparently.

It's more than worrying, and it cuts _deep_ , how Allison's persistance only barely worked, and it had taken over a month to get him back to snarking and babbling and some semblance of normal. At least, it'd taken that long to get him to start eating again without needing to be bribed or puppy-dog-eyed or otherwise convinced.)

Isaac's father. (And try not to startle him, ignore the way he flinches sometimes, don't let him goad you into physical violence when he thinks he's done something wrong, and he _will_ try.)

Erica's medical history pre-Bite, and how Erica, Isaac, and Boyd _got_ the Bite. (He already knew that she'd had seizures, been different, before all this happened to her, and that the three of them were fast bonded not only by the trauma that dragged them into all this, but, too, the fact that they'd learned they were each others' soulmates around the same time; and that was absolutely all he needed to know, according to some unspoken agreement that he'd decided to accept fairly quickly.)

Boyd's sister. Why Erica's parents barely seem to mind that she's long-since moved in with Boyd and his Nan. (Isaac lives with them, too, in a dilapidated little apartment downtown, but the three of them honestly spend so much time at Stiles' and Scott's that it seems like they only really sleep over at Boyd's Nan's a few times a week to induldge her and keep her satisfied and pleased with the notion of their well-being.)

The scars. _Gods,_ the scars. He, along with the twins (and Laura, Philip, and Peter, though, those three are kept busy searching for their parent's- in Peter's case, his sister and brother-in-law's- murderer, working, and trying to keep up with their old house's renovations. Derek himself is often distracted by his fairly demanding job), have steadily been reinvited back into Le'Mabh's training sessions for the supernaturally inclined, and every time he sees Stiles twist just the right way to make his shirt ride up...

Hints of lash marks peek out, marring the milky skin of his back, new enough to make Derek feel sick.

Lydia doesn't even try to hide hers, she wears them with a pride that's five shades manic, the electric burns tangling with her ribs, the arrow that must've gone straight through the muscle of her leg, and the silvery raised line wringing her throat.

Allison is in between the two extremes, she doesn't religiously, near-fanatically hide them like Stiles does (and Derek is sure, with a bilious pit hollowing out his belly, that Stiles has more, that every layer of baggy, long, _modest_ piece of clothing he wears like armor is designed to secret them away so nobody can guess, ask, know), but she doesn't show them off like Lydia, either. Seeing hers is like collecting puzzle pieces over time; claw marks, gun-shot wounds, little nicks here and there, a long-healed gash right beneath her kidney that might've killed her had it been two centimeters in any other direction, more, because of _course_ there's more.

Part of him wants to ask what the hell these kids have been through, but then he's viciously reminded of all the stories he's already heard, and they're the _tamer_ ones, he thinks, and he gets tongue-tied before the questions can ever dribble out, frothy, vaguely venomous, to poison the well of camaraderie they've been rebuilding since they got back.

Their scars are the one subject neither he, nor the twins, need any warnings or subtle cues to steer clear from. It's too horrifying a thing to think about most days, let alone to actively bring up, especially when none of them want to know, not really.

Their guilt, like a frayed rope, a constant friction-burn around their necks, is a heavy, constricting, _terrible_ thing.

If they knew the full extent of the damage their leaving had put Stiles and Scott and this little Pack, this little family they've spilled literal blood sweat and tears to create, through—Derek wonders if they'd survive that without, just, _breaking_.

He doubts it.


	3. Falling

"You're growing it out?" Derek wonders, watching Stiles scrape fingernails against his scalp, closely shorn hair getting a little longer over time.

The twins are passed out on top of each other in the corner, while all the rest but Allison and Scott, who are curled up half-protectively around Gabriel and Cora, have gone.

It's almost odd, how normal this is becoming, taking care of whatever utterly inane and/or insane thing is plaguing the town this week, and then heading to Dig's Diner well after closing hours to half-assedly clean up as they work through whatever food Digsvestya's either left out for them, or is willing to serve them so godsdamned late.

Half of him is worried that his family is becoming so desensitized to this after nearly a year immersed in it, that Laura and Peter barely blinked in the face of feral _garden gnomes._ Philip had just laughed, where the twins had looked torn between being disturbed and laughing themselves, and the McCall Pack had sighed, shaking their heads and pushing up their sleeves, all set to take care of the problem as they always did.

When it was over, only a few of them were worse for wear (the twins had taken the brunt of it, honestly, and he doesn't begrudge how exhausted they must be, now), and Derek had had to fight not to snicker at the way Laura had waltzed right up to the coffee pot, and started guzzling. She'd heard the stifled snort and flipped him off, anyway—frazzled, but undamaged.

The McCall Pack has, ominously, worryingly, stated more than once that this has been a very, _very_ good year.

"Mmm," Stiles hums, and places a finger on a specific passage in one book as he distractedly flips to another page in the book on top of one of the piles that surround him. His reading habits, Derek has learned, are _exactly_ as eccentric as they used to be, even when half the books are a little over thirty percent char and the rest are borrowed from Deaton, who he's complained loudly and repetitively that he does not trust, at all.

Derek had stopped taking that seriously, when, the last time Stiles was grumbling about it, Deaton was literally giving him some sort of magical tattoo, and nodding along good-naturedly, as Scott laughed at them, and Lydia, rolling her eyes exaggeratedly, told him the joke was so ancient it was becoming painful to hear.

"Does it look weird?"

"Nah," Derek tells him, smiling a little as he gentles a hand over Stiles' prickly head, and Stiles side-eyes him, scent thickening with something sorrow-stained, but happier than before. The syrup in his eyes swirls with something implacable before he returns his attention to the books they'd managed to excavate from the wreckage of their house in their efforts to rebuild.

They'd deliberated over whether or not to throw them away, or keep them, maybe let Peter see what he could glean from it all, but Stiles' smile when Laura and Philip had decided to give them to him had been so startlingly, sweetly, unendingly overjoyed, and his happiness making him smell better, in that moment, than he had in the whole of the time since their reunion, that it had been well beyond worth it. And, with Stiles thoroughly researching and digitizing everything, transcribing it into an easy-to-navigate usb bestiary, it was paying off in spades.

"Why did you buzz it, anyway?" Derek asks, because he's kind of missed Stiles' hair, had been a little sad to see it gone when he'd met him again.

Stiles chews on his lip for a moment, shrugs, the trickle of spice smoke and mist-dewed roses and creamy french-vanilla tangling with wilt-rot and bitter acridity again as Stiles leans away a little. Derek frowns, but lets Stiles have his space, wondering, thoughts going a little storm-ridden, what he'd said wrong.

"Too much trouble to take care of," Stiles finally gets out after awhile, and, because it's one of those days, where he craves people and the assurance that nobody's going anywhere, shifts so that one of his legs is pressed up against Derek's under the table.

And memories hit Derek in a rush, that Stiles' mom had been the only reason he'd had it so long when they'd first met, and that, when she'd died, he hadn't wanted to _touch_ it. That, after they'd really started becoming friends, Derek had been the one to wrestle Stiles into letting him brush his hair, because he couldn't stand how much of a rat's nest it had become. That, when it was a foregone conclusion that Stiles and Scott were as much Pack as anyone else, there wasn't a day that had gone by without someone, usually Derek or Laura, sometimes Philip or the twins, only twice Peter, running a brush through his hair. That, when he was feeling particularly upset, or maybe lonely, or maybe tired, he'd come to Derek with a hairbrush and a book and wide, wide, dewy syrup eyes peering up at him hopefully, and, sometimes, he'd spend _hours_ brushing and playing with Stiles' hair, until he was either smiling again, or dozing and close to passing out, or he'd gotten bored and couldn't manage sitting still any longer.

"Oh," Derek breathes, hushed. Swallowing, he lifts his hand to begin running it through Stiles' nonexistent hair again, and he hopes Stiles understands the promise in the gesture.

_It's okay, it's alright. I'm not going anywhere. I'm here, I'm **here**._

Stiles sighs, most of the tension that had been steadily building in his body since Derek brought it up releasing.

* * *

Gravity is an inexorable thing.

There are so, so many ways to fall.

And there is a vast plethora of ways to _fall in love_.

Probably the craziest is this: a boy you were friends with when you were a teenager, a packmate you've slowly been rebonding with after seven years of absence, a teenager himself, now, standing over the remains of your parents' murderer, the woman who'd tricked you, who'd made your mother and father pay for your mistakes. This young man who's full of mysteries and secrets and looks haunted and chased and exhausted, because he never really sleeps. You, who no one knows feels wretched and miserable about your parents' deaths for more than just grief, whose vengeance was just a little more complex.

And that young man stands tall, breathless, as snow falls, the alley soaked in starlight and fresh, crisp, freezing winter, crimson running, shockingly, desecratingly, from the now-dead body into the soft, fluffy, innocent snow. And he turns, syrupy eyes sparkling a little strangely, a crooked smile waltzing onto his lips, a little hapless, a lot wry.

The barbed whip in his hands drips scarlet.

Their Packs, around them, have stilled in shock that it's finally, _finally_ fucking over.

Two weeks worth of chasing.

Two weeks worth of strange deaths and suffering even stranger injuries, along with all the small, stifling curses that got through Stiles' barriers.

Two weeks of renewed guilt and grief and pain and every weakness being used against them.

And here they are, at the end, and Stiles just laughs, says, mellifluous, "Happy birthday, Der. I promise you'll get better presents when we get back home, but, eh. This has gotta count for something, right?"

And Derek is fucked.

It's not _this_ , exactly. Yes, this moment, this exact moment, where Stiles is smiling like he actually means it, where Derek's caught in the adrenaline rush of a hard-fought battle, still a little dizzy from the bloodloss of two already-healing could've-been-fatal wounds, with snow and blood and Pack coalescing around him—this is when he realizes.

But it's been a thousand things, it'll be a thousand more things, it's a deep-dive of subconscious emotion that's built up without his permission or knowledge until, _until_ , Stiles remembers that his birthday is on Christmas Eve and Derek's heart actually skips about four beats before deciding that it's going to invite a bunch of butterflies to a volcanic dance party.

He swears he goes so hot in that instance that at least three feet of the freshly fallen snow around him just fucking _melts_.

Now is seriously not the time to have this revelation.

Now is absolutely the _worst_ time to have this revelation.

"It counts for everything," Derek finds himself breathing, and now that his body's clued in, it decides to do some unhelpfully ridiculous things to him when Stiles' smile goes soft and _ridiculously_ affectionate, considering the context.

"Aw, _man,_ couldn't she have waited to die until we were in the woods?" Erica grumbles, breaking them out of the moment, and half of the two Packs give her incredulous looks. "What?" she asks when she notices, "There's no way we can build a pyre in the middle of the warehouse district, and it's going to take _hours_ to pack her into a fucking trunk and haul her dead ass to an incinerator."

"Damn," Lydia clicks her tongue, "I knew I should've brought molotov cocktails."

Quite a few of them look to Stiles, then, eyebrows raised, and, blinking slowly before catching up to what they mean, he protests, "No! Not Roscoe, come _on,"_ he flails his arms a little, and then groans, "Why is it always Roscoe?"

"Because your car's the crappiest," Jackson says flatly, and Laura absently cuffs him upside the head but doesn't actually correct him.

"Actually, mine is," Scott chimes in, unashamed, over Jackson and Laura companionably throwing insults at each other. "But yours is the crappiest vehicle that has _enough room for dead bodies."_

"Jesus Christ," Stiles says, sounding very done with it all. Then, the moment he hears Derek smother a snicker, "Help me with the dead lady, Der, she is the Fates' gift to you, after all."

* * *

They all wake up a little sore in a shitty motel in a desert on the outskirts of Cali, middle of nowhere, a place where sand-dusted roads that invite the kind of heat that makes everything sweat-sticky have somehow made way for dense fog and denser snow and a chill that scrapes at your bones.

Derek's still vaguely surprised that the other Pack joined them when the trail for their parents' killer finally picked up, begging it off as a christmas break road trip, and, yet, he's not surprised at all, though he's a little sad that Stiles and Scott probably still don't trust them to come back home on their own.

They end up in a Diner on the way back home- which is pretty much par for the course, by now, even if it isn't Dig's- there are fourteen of them, seven to a booth, all crammed in and on each other's laps, huddled together half for warmth and half for decompression and comfort. Erica, Isaac, and Boyd are all amassed around Peter, who they've taken to exceptionally quickly, and who Peter's fast become appallingly resigned to being fond of, Lydia and Jackson across from them with Philip and all his hedonistic mellow in their corner to balance it all out; Scott and Allison are bookending the twins, all motherhennish and oddly, intensely protective, with Stiles, Derek, and Laura across from them.

Stiles is beside him, hanging on to his cup of coffee for dear life, even though he knows it's a double-edged sword, and that it'll just make him more tired in the long run, where Laura's given up the ghost and is drooling, unabashedly passed out on Derek's shoulder.

_My big sister and my Alpha, folks._

The waitress comes by to give them their second round of food and there's a glare to her brisk, professional smile that says she's going to hate them sincerely and for the rest of her life if they don't leave her a big freaking tip for this.

"Hey," Stiles says, a little out of it, and then he reaches past Derek to slap Laura's arm until she snuffle-snorts an awakening inhale and hisses like a cat thrown into a bathtub might. "Oh, hush, you, I have things. I want to say. I mean, I had a whole speech planned, but I forgot it somewhere between the dramatic car chase and the winter wonderland from hell."

"A speech?" she asks, her incredulity dulled only by the fact that she's still half asleep. She blinks, wipes a hand across her mouth, makes a pathetic sort of noise and materializes a napkin out of nowhere to pat Derek's shoulder clean with an apologetic, mostly animal whine.

"Yeah, because. Okay, we'll get home by the next fullmoon, right? And I found this spell, and I was wondering how you and Scotty would feel about a Pack merging?"

Laura blinks again, slowly. "A what?"

Scott, across the table, seems to snap to attention, while the rest go tense with a bright kind of anticipation, a spark of hope glittering in their eyes.

"There's this whole fullmoon ritual thing you've got to do to make sure the packbonds all fall into place correctly, and there's the slightest chance that having two Alphas will, like, triple our collective power?" he says, rotating his hand absently like he's weaving the words together in the air as he's saying them, full of an odd kind of confidence and surety even as his voice lilts up at the end like a question. "But, you know. If you're down, that's my christmas present to all of you, _if_ you're down—if you guys aren't cool with me being your Emissary, though, we'll need to find the person you _do_ want to be your Emissary to do it. If you're not down, though..."

He takes a sip of his coffee and looks at her with a shrug. "My backup plan involves pie."

"I don't even like pie," she tells him. Then, "Are you guys—I mean, would you actually want—it's—I—"

"Let's take a vote," Peter says behind them in a rich-silk tone, the kind of tone he utilizes when he's got his eyes set on something he wants and is willing to do just about anything to get his way. "All those in favor?"

Derek has a feeling that the only reason why fourteen hands don't simultaneously shoot up with all the enthusiasm of a teacher's pet with all the answers is because literally no one is as awake and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as Scott is somehow managing to be right now, but, unwaveringly, one after the other, certainty and determination all bubbling with unrestrained joy at the idea, fourteen hands do go up. (Their waitress, one of about four people actually working here, looks at them like they're crazy. Philip, with a dopey grin, gives her a jaunty wave before the hands go down.)

"Okay," Laura breathes, a smile winding its' way up on her face. "Gods be damned, but okay."

"And, me being your Emissary...?" Stiles begins, trailing off questioningly, and no less than half of them give him a _look._

"Stiles," Laura laughs. "You've kind of been our Emissary ever since we got back."

"Oh," he says, looking vaguely dumbfounded. "Huh."

Erica twists around so she can wrap her arms around Stiles' neck from the booth behind them and pouts, "Can we still have pie, though?"

"Jesus fucking Christ, you glutton."

"Fuck off, sparky. I've _had_ your pie. It's literally better than sex."

Derek tries not to be too intrigued or endeared by the way Stiles' flush lands more on his collarbone than his cheeks, all strawberry cream swirled into milk, and fails miserably.

* * *

"I never thanked you," Noah says, after three rounds of rock-paper-scissors decided which house- between Stiles', Scott's, or the Hales' just finished- they'd end up at, and inevitably end up in a tangled pile of passed out bodies on the living room floor in.

They'd all careened through, collapsed, and been too tired to really do more than grumble about the fact that only four people could really stack on the couch and none of them were willing to get up for blankets or pillows. About two hours later, Noah coming in had woken a few of them up, just barely, and Derek enough that he'd been able to scent a prickling kind of fear from Stiles, been able hear his heartbeat stutter worryingly, and nudge him the rest of the way awake with a wolven rumble, and hushed assurances as he'd run his fingers through the mass of Stiles' quickly lengthening hair.

"It's okay. You're okay, you're home, you're safe. Shh, it's okay, it's okay."

And Stiles had released a shaky breath, said, "I believe you. I'm okay," then his lips had quirked a bit, dewy syrup eyes oozing a playful kind of warmth despite the tremors still rippling through him and the way shadow-smoke brine-drenched bitter coffee and rotting roses still had a choke-hold on his scent, "just jonesing for a pillow."

Which'd had the rest of their Pack, who'd kindly played dead through the whole thing, start buzzing with a repeat of their previous grumbles, and left Derek rolling his eyes good-naturedly as he'd gotten up to grab blankets and pillows for the lot of them, feeling Stiles' sorrowful, smiling gaze on him the whole way.

The sheriff had stopped him at the top of the stairs, though, an aged gratitude in his careworn face. "For getting me to clean up my act."

"No thanks needed," Derek tells him honestly. "I'm just glad you did."

"Still, thank you. For that, and for lookin' after him, now you're all back. I know he can take care of himself but... I'm new-hat with all this werewolf stuff, and it still scares me, the trouble he could get into. This world's already tried its' level-best to kill him, and it's hurt him... a lot."

Derek doesn't really know what to say to that, because he can read all the implications Noah's leaving to hang in the air as his river-run eyes trail off into the middle-distance just as clearly as he can the implications of the nightmare he'd woken Stiles up from not ten seconds earlier and the charcoal-smudge bags that are always hanging heavy under his eyes like they fucking belong there. He knows Stiles and Scott and all the friends they've gained have been through the kind of hell that doesn't leave you, but he won't ask, he'll never ask, because he wants to wait until they're ready to tell him on their own and because the guilt for having left them here to deal with it all by themselves is eating him alive as it is, both.

He also knows that he'd never leave again, that he's crash-landed into head-over-heels at some point in the last twenty-four hours, and that 'looking after Stiles' has probably been at the top of his to-do-list since he was fucking sixteen.

Being thanked for it leaves him feeling vaguely uncomfortable and really awkward, so he just nods, lets Noah clap him on the shoulder with a grim sort of smile, and goes back to what he was doing.

It takes three loads to satisfy everyone, and by the time he's done most of them have all returned to sleep, with the exception of Stiles, who smiles something aching and sweet at him when Derek lays down beside him again, posture open and inviting. Stiles creeps into his space, easy, and, as he'd done all those months ago, no less surprising than it was then, kisses him on the cheek, before curling into his side, the weight of his arm across Derek's belly and a leg tangled with his own, as he drifts back to a steadier, more restful sleep.

Derek exhales harshly, tries not to think too deeply about it, and closes his eyes determinedly.

* * *

Stiles worries for his soulmate.

Well, to be entirely honest, there is no amount of time where Stiles isn't worrying about everyone he loves with every fiber of his being.

He makes them eat healthy, learns to cook to their tastes so they _enjoy_ eating healthy, doesn't let Dig lead everyone (including Dig himself, stubborn old man) to an early, greasy, heart-attack induced grave; he has Scott get on their cases about going to Le'Mabh's when they start trailing, goads the Hales into training again and bribes Le'Mabh into letting them without too much fuss, gets on everyone's cases when they start getting arrogant about their abilities ("There's always something or someone out there who's better, and one day they might try to kill you, so stay sharp and don't fucking die."); he gets them to talk about the shit that could fuck with their heads in the long run, with him or with each other, if with nobody else, if only once; he makes sure they're well-rested and clear-headed and researches endlessly so that they're well-informed, too.

He realizes how hypocritical that can be, when he lets himself wallow in insomnia and night terrors and struggles with eating at all, some days, but he tries to make up for that by allowing them to take care of him, too, when they're feeling particularly determined about it, or by staying close and reassuring when it's a good day.

But Stiles' worry for Derek's gained a new sort of texture.

This man that he feels utterly unworthy of and too broken to hold, too fucked up to ask to be held by—not that any of that really matters, anyway, when all they are is childhood friends, all they'll ever be is packmates.

Just, sometimes Derek gets this look on his face.

And Derek is the type to play his cards close to the chest, even if his poker face is literally the worst the second you actually get to know him. He scowls and grouches when he's uncomfortable or shy, he's often quiet, but he's always, always _bright_ in a startling, beautiful way that catches you off guard whenever he's anywhere close to happy.

Still, there's a melancholy guilty grief that lingers, even after they've gotten the bitch that killed Talia and Arlow Hale. It's reserved and reclusive and hard to catch, and Derek's shut up like a fucking bear-trap about it.

So, Stiles is worried, and there's nothing around killing things right now, which means he's worried and _idle_.

Which means he can afford to dig his teeth into what's worrying him and chew at the muscle of it until it bleeds answers.

It takes him about two days to piece it together (which is nice, considering he's got a ritual to perform at the end of the week), and he hates the puzzle he's made from the pieces he's accumulated from Laura, Peter, Philip, and the twins. A new relationship after an old one had ended roughly (a boyfriend who hadn't been able to handle the hours or dangers that came with dating a firefighter, or some shit like that, but Derek had been in love, and had gotten his heart broken by the end of it), then, inexplicable distance that no one understood, a strange sort of aloofness even as he talked up this new girl he was dating, until, eventually, his quiet became a part of that distance.

And then Talia and Arlow had died, and Derek had crashed harder into the grief that came with that than anyone else, had fed bits of information about the killer that he'd 'found' to Peter and Laura, had been virtually inconsolable until they'd gotten to Beacon Hills, and now, it seems, the high from coming back home is finally starting to wear off.

Stiles thinks about the face Derek was wearing when they finally got his parents' murderer, blank in a way that meant he was three snapping threads from falling apart completely, so desolate and shocky that Stiles had bursted out with the first thing he'd thought of, trying for distraction, for some kind of levity, and he can guess.

He can imagine the sorceress seducing the Alpha's son while he was on rebound and using that to her advantage.

He can imagine all the little ways Derek must blame himself and all the fear and pain he must keep hidden behind his teeth along with a secret that only burdens him to keep.

And he decides not to say anything.

He decides not to say anything just like he knows Derek's decided not to say anything about the way Stiles gets sometimes. Sure, Derek's slowly become one of the main people to go in search of him on his worse days with the intent of dragging him out of whatever hole he's dug himself into, and making sure he eats and sleeps and remembers how to live like a normal human being even if he doesn't necessarily want to, but he also deliberately bites his tongue in the face of nightmares and hints accidentally dropped into average conversation like rocks into a well, splashing and creating too many ripples in their wake.

So, Stiles knows, now, and that'll probably inform the way he acts no matter what he does, but, beyond that... It's up to Derek, who and when and how and if he tells anyone.

Still, he strays closer to Derek than normal for a few weeks after he figures it out.

(It's vaguely hilarious that he's getting to know all the people who work for the fire department almost as well as he knows all the deputies, and a little moreso that they all seem to think Derek's a silently scowling vanguard who morphs into a fluffy, smiling teddy bear whenever family and friends visit.)

* * *

The ritual isn't difficult, necessarily, but the potion they all drink for it leaves them feeling giddy and rambunctious, makes their self control slip a little more than normal, the fullmoon heavy in the sky, goading them on.

Stiles will complain, later, that it took four hours to get them to stop roughhousing and playing and goofing off in order to corral them into the clearing he'd set up with crystals and runes and imbued with power; even after he'd gotten them all set up, the Alphas, who were meant to be recalibrating all the packbonds with a gentle, non-threatening Bite to their Betas throats, couldn't stop bursting into giggles.

"Children," Stiles sighs, as he watches the domino-effect spin out of control, making even Peter fall over himself with uproarious, nonsensical laughter.

Philip, the only one who still seems even mildly sensible- which, considering how he's the normally impish, flamboyantly mystical flower child, is saying something- says, amusement glimmering in his pale hazel eyes, "You better never tell them how you made that potion. They'll end up like this all the time."

"Jesus Christ," Stiles mutters, and tries to set Laura and Scott back to task. "Next time _I'm_ getting unspeakably high," he tells them, "and you guys'll be _my_ designated driver."

Laura starts singing a shriekingly off-key christmas carol, and Scott follows her, barely carrying tune, which impedes what they're trying to de here a bit, but Stiles just rolls his eyes and lets them when everyone else begins to join in.

"Ridiculous, ridiculous children," he says again, and then Derek's in front of him, out of fucking nowhere, just, two centimeters away from him all of a sudden without any notice with a devotion-drenched, delicate-sweet smile that's so openly affectionate it practically makes Stiles melt on the spot.

"Sing with us," his soulmate says, voice lined with something fur-soft, small, quietly fond, eyes dancing.

And, yeah, there's no fucking way he can say no to that, is there? Not when Derek's looking at him like _that_ , and Stiles' heart is apparently out of his chest and in his soulmate's hands, even with something as simple as this.

Probably with other, more dangerous things, too, probably fragile and easily broken and already so damaged and terribly, awfully unworthy, but Stiles isn't going to think about that right now.

Instead, he gives in, sings along, and pretends the way Derek beams at him like he just hung all the stars in the sky isn't getting under his skin in all the ways it really shouldn't.

It's all a more recklessly exciting, endearing, exasperating affair than he'd expected, and they just _barely_ get done in time, but, by the end, he can feel the searing warmth of thirteen packbonds wrapped solidly around his heart, and he can see the glow of happiness and strength blazing in everyone's eyes, and he thinks it's beyond worth it.

* * *

Le'Mabh's got this way, sometimes, where her voice goes honey-thick and gentle-deadly, where she has them locked in the gym for hours, telling them how to do a move, showing it to them, making them practice on each other, cycling that last one over and over again until it's all instinct and muscle memory.

Thing about that, though, is the physicality of it. And when Stiles gets partnered with Derek (Le'Mabh throwing a purposeful wink his way as she does it, because she's meddlesome and probably smelled 'crush' at some point, and decided to interfere), well, there's a _lot_ of touching. They're sweaty, and they're pushing each other, and the ache seeping into their muscles is warm-sweet and a little intoxicating.

When Stiles pins him, finally, after about a dozen or so times _being_ pinned, it's a little difficult not to get excited in a way that would, under the circumstances, be mortifying. He's had enough experience sparring under the influence of teenaged hormones that nipping it in the bud is mostly easy- especially since he can just make himself flash back to nightmare fodder, worse comes to worst, and kill the simmering heat in his belly that way- but there's still the oceanic ripple of abs beneath his hips (because why wear shirts when you could torture your sparring partner's libido, instead?), the bulge of golden-shimmer muscles under his hands, in his control, and Derek, panting open-mouthed and huffing little groaning laughs here and there, atmospheric eyes focused intensely on him.

God fucking damn.

He's thankful for the end, when it comes, not only because he feels a little bruised and a lot langurous, but also because the tension, electric and a little unfocused, kept ratcheting up. Every time one of them had the other locked to the mat, their gazes would catch, and their breaths would hitch almost in unison, the one holding the other down for just a second longer than actually needed. There was a moment, at the end, there, where Stiles was feeling dizzy and a little high, the taste of Derek's skin bursting on his tongue, and he'd been ten seconds from throwing everything out the window and just grinding into it.

Which would've been a bad idea for so many reasons, not the least of which being that Pack and sundry are all here, Dig applauding his wife every time she came around the block to hand their fucking asses to them, the dick.

Sat on the bench, head tilted back against the wall, vaguely frustrated yet satisfied for having gone through the hard work of learning something new, he feels Derek sitting next to him (and he knows it's Derek, he'll always know when it's Derek) and has to fight not to smile.

This isn't something he should be encouraging, or wanting, or selfishly allowing, he tries to remind himself, but actively denying one's soulmate is a little like flaying sinew from bone, and Stiles is too tired right now to try as hard as he probably should.

Besides it's a little... overwhelming to realize that there's something there _to_ encourage, on Derek's side. There shouldn't be. Stiles is this fucked up spazzy kid who's barely attached to reality most days, and here's Derek, fireman adonis with guilt issues and self-sacrificing issues and who Stiles honestly wants to wrap in cotton and keep from the fucking world sometimes. It seems surreal to think that there could be any attraction there, but maybe that's all it is.

Maybe it's just the hype of the spar and Derek finding him a little attractive, maybe it's nothing beyond that.

There are warring parts of him, his heart begging and sure that there's more, could be more, and all his logic trying to shut that down and put it back in the lock-box it belongs.

Stiles swallows thickly and bumps his shoulder into Derek's, perversely comforted by the reality of him there, even as he closes his eyes against the many, many he things he wants to feel about that.

"Stiles?" Derek asks, soft and a little solicitous, leaning into his side, but Stiles can't really find it in himself to respond. About three minutes of pregnant silence later, Derek begins brushing his fingers through Stiles' hair, tender and soothing, "It's okay, it's okay. Whatever it is, it's okay."

 _It's you,_ Stiles doesn't say. _It's me wanting you and loving you with everything that I am, and even the Fates' knowing I don't deserve you._

 _I'm yours,_ and his gut pinches with that, eyes stinging like he wants to cry. _But you will never be mine._

He keeps quiet, though, lets Derek pet him and calm him until his shattering heart is causing him a little less pain and he can open his eyes without tears threatening to fall.

And, as he always has since that day Derek touched him in the library, he opens his eyes to a world in vivid color.

* * *

It's a month after they've killed the woman who murdered his parents, and two weeks after the moon ritual when Stiles shows up at their house acting just a little cagey, drags Derek over to Roscoe, and opens up the back to reveal a decently big pile of meticulously wrapped presents.

"I did promise you better, when we got home," he says, fidgeting. "It took me a minute to clean the car, and then I couldn't decide, and... Just, here. Happy birthday."

His collar is riding low enough that Derek can see the candied-cherry flush painting his clavicle, creeping up his neck, even as his scent blooms with so many roses he can barely smell the coffee and the incense and the rain.

Laura, nosey and excited, for reasons he can't even fathom beyond she's figured out how he feels already, probably- and that's too worrisome a thought to touch so he's going to ignore it, for now- helps them lug everything from Roscoe into the house, and then practically sits on Stiles to keep him from bolting through the opening-up-the-presents part, even though it's painfully obvious that's exactly what he wants to do.

"It's nothing," he says, and, "I should go, Dig texted me earlier that he was short-handed," and, "I have magic, Lulu, I swear to god."

To which Laura replies by gleefully dead-weighting on his lap and telling him, "But this is the best part," and, to Derek, "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon," and, again, to Stiles, "Oh, hush, you big baby, enjoy the show."

Stiles squirms and wrings his hands and looks generally discomfitted as Derek, warmth pooling, deep and infinite, in his thundering heart, raises a mildly sardonic eyebrow at the both of them, before going to open the gifts.

He is _overwhelmed_ , to say the least, when all's said and done.

He's at the end of maybe a dozen yards of wrapping paper with two limited edition books (The Call of The Wild, and Sea-Wolf by Jack London), a switch-knife style antique comb, a new leather jacket that's inlaid with protective runes, a giant wolf stuffed animal, and more, all of them a toss-up between outrageous, ridiculous, and random, or genuinely sweet and thoughtful.

Laura's got this wide, brimming with big sister ideas smile skating ominously across her face, where Stiles seems very interested in the floorboards all of a sudden, and Derek, against all his better judgement, kind of just wants to kiss him.

"Couldn't decide," Derek repeats faintly, dumbfounded.

"Nope," Stiles says, popping the p- which is honestly a little ludicrous when Derek's paying such close attention to his mouth- and maybe he'd be better at playing it off if his skin wasn't flushed, his scent riot-wild with too many heartfelt, badly hidden things.

Derek lets himself hope, for a singular, half desperate moment, that Stiles feels more for him that their friendship demands, that he craves and yearns, and _wants_ the same way Derek does.

It's oddly stifling, trying to shove those thoughts down and away. Not right now, he thinks, not yet. Because yes, there's something between them, but he doesn't quite have a handle on what, and, besides, Stiles is young, he shouldn't be tied down so early, he needs to be able to explore and expiriment, he needs to have the chance to find his soulmate and settle into his skin a little more.

Or, maybe, Derek's just a little terrified of what persuing this feeling might lead to, and just a little too shy to lay it bear out loud.

"Hey, Laura, could you go see if—" "Yep, yeah, I've got—. There's a thing," she agrees with the breathless enthusiasm of someone who's going to tease him like hell for this later, and who's also going to be of a mind to congratulate him on something that isn't even a thing yet, won't be, any time soon.

Derek waits until she's out of ear-shot, thanks the Gods they pitched in for sound-proofed rooms, and digs the velveteen jewellry box out of his pocket as he stands up from the middle of the rug and pads over to where Stiles is sat on the couch, eyes lifting toward Derek's, molten syrup swirling with something implacable.

"Der?"

Derek flashes a fleeting smile, and hands the crushed-felt cobalt blue, palm-sized box over, watches Stiles cradle it in his hands like it's something fragile and extremely confusing.

"Merry christmas," Derek says softly, and figures turnabout's probably fair play, here.

A deep breath, and Stiles opens it, makes a startled-delighted sound in the back of his throat at the intricate dreamcatcher pendant necklace that Derek took to four different practitioners, had enchanted with nearly every magical night terror repellant and soother know to man.

"Jesus Christ, you're so much better at this shit than I am."

Derek huffs, shakes his head, and opens his mouth to say something, he's not entirely sure what, when Stiles vaults off of the couch and tilts toward him, knuckling under his chin and pressing a lingering kiss to the crest of his cheek.

This is the third time he's done it, and Derek's got no resistance built up whatsoever, apparently, because that's all it takes to render him dumb and speechless.

"I really do have to go," Stiles murmurs as he draws away, eyes glittering with a smile that doesn't touch his lips, and a vast, unending affection he normally keeps a lid on. "But, thank you. It means..." he lets out a slow, throaty laugh that makes all of Derek's blood rush dizzyingly down. _"Everything."_

And then he's sweeping away, fleeting and mercurial and impossible to ever understand completely.

Gods, he's so fucking gone on him it's not even funny.

* * *

"You should tell him," Scott says one day, when late afternoon is drifting lazily into dusk, the moon rising against the setting sun, and they're sitting on the bench watching the other kids practice and listening with half an ear as Coach shouts at all of them.

"Tell who what?"

"Tell Derek," Scott says, side-eying him. "And you know exactly what."

"No."

"Stiles..." He sighs.

 _"Scott,"_ Stiles cuts back sharply. "No."

"Look, everyone in the Pack can see _something's_ going on. They don't know what, but they'll start asking soon, you have to know that, and you've only got so long before Erica or one of the others says something about you having Macropia, and then Derek's going to wonder why you never told him, and the truth's gonna come out, anyway."

"Yeah, maybe," Stiles concedes, and his hand absently goes for the silvery dreamcatcher hanging low on his chest, the feel of it in his hand sparking some kind of soul-deep, inexorable comfort. It almost scares him, how much he likes having it there, so close to his heart. "The _abridged_ truth."

Scott makes a lightly amused, mostly aggrieved noise. "I understood it in the beginning," he says softly, "or I thought I did. Actually, maybe I didn't at all, maybe I was still pissed off for what you went through after they left, but I'm pretty sure you forgave him for that the second it was over." Stiles says nothing, because that's... pretty much exactly what he did. "Dude, I am _lost_ as to why you're still hiding it. I mean, it's obvious he likes you, and you've been in love with him since you were a kid—since before you even knew what love meant, probably."

"Shut up," Stiles says, shoving him lightly, but the protest's weak and more for show than anything.

"C'mon, man," Scott presses. "You should talk to him."

Stiles shakes his head with a grumbling sigh. "Even if he _did_ like me, which I seriously doubt-" Scott scoffs, and Stiles ignores him- "you realize I still wake up my dad screaming my ass off in my sleep?" He lets go of the necklace like it burned him, it's evidence, plain and clear and wrapped around his throat like a fucking noose. "I still need to count my fingers at least once a day, and I'm currently working out how to read russian so that I'll know everything's still fucking real the next time I radomly pick up a book that's in a language I don't actually know. I'm fucked in the head Scotty, and he—. It doesn't matter that him touching me gave me color, okay? It really doesn't."

"Why?" And Scott's starting to sound a little mulish, now. "Because you didn't give _him_ color?"

"No," Stiles snaps, "because I'm damaged and he doesn't fucking deserve that."

Scott's jaw snaps shut with a click, and his eyes go soft and sad, his whole body curving toward Stiles, protective and unhappy. They've had this fight more than once—not about Derek, but about the Nogitsune, about what was and wasn't Stiles' fault, about how mostrous and unstable and forsaken Stiles can feel. Scott's never managed to win, for all that he tries.

Mostly because, whenever he _does_ try, Stiles just gets up and walks the fuck away, which sounds like a _really_ good idea right about now.

Scott doesn't even move to stop him.

* * *

They meet her on a thursday a week before valentine's day.

There's a misty kind of rain that's determined to soak everything in that slow-and-steady-wins-the-race kind of way, and everything's gray and muted, a subdued, creeping cold cast over the world. There's an oddly content languid feeling curling in Derek's bones, even as they trek the Preserve after school lets out in search of whatever the fuck is making trees pick up their roots and start dancing.

In between the hopes that people will just assume someone spiked the town's supply with acid again and vague small talk about which colleges they want to go to, now that they have enough Pack settled here permanently that they have the freedom _to_ go, they find an old lady cackling and eating honey as she twirls around clothed in nothing but her long, white hair and tangled flower vines.

They all just stare at her incredulously for a moment, because _really?_

But there she is, unabashed, and she doesn't even stop dancing when she notices them, just laughs harder and croons, "I am Hippolyta Liggue the III, and I have come to stay for a week! Oh, my! Oh, deary-darling-dears, will you grant me shelter and feed me honey, or am I to be turned away again, in fear?"

And everyone turns to Stiles, because this smells of old magic and superstition, and he knows more about that than all of them put together, also because this is just _weird_ , and when you encounter something this weird, Stiles is the automatic go-to, always. If he doesn't know what to do, you're either screwed or you've ended up in an alternate universe and you're _very_ screwed.

Stiles stifles a sighing groan, goes right up to the old lady, and plucks one of the flowers adorning her body. She lets him with a crinkle-eyed smile that reads all surprised pleasure. He stares at the flower for about three minutes, all of them watching him, quiet, prepared to move at his go ahead, the old lady eerily still, waiting.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Stiles says, handing back the flower. "Yes. Stay, Hippolyta Liggue the III, we grant you shelter and pardon, may your mischief make the Old Gods smile." Then, turning back to them, blunt and unapologetic, "This week is going to be _hell_ , and we're probably going to have to actually pump acid into the town's water supply if we ever want anyone to buy that Beacon Hills isn't being visited by a fucking Púca."

The old lady begins cackling again, and sprints a little ways away, all graceful, spritely gazelle, for all that she looks like the nudist hippie's rendition of Mrs. Clause.

"I have hallucinogenics," Philip says brightly, and half of them groan.

"It's not as if anyone will believe them," Peter chimes, poison-silk, remorseless.

"Okay, yeah, but it'd be nice to keep everyone in Beacon Hills, which we are _responsible_ for and _duty-bound_ to, sane," Scott says, earnest and determined.

And they all end up looking to Stiles again, because this really is more his wheelhouse.

"Oh, fuck me," he groans, shaking his head and walking back over to them, "this is gonna be fun."

He's more right about that than he realizes, for all that he's being sardonic in the moment. Somehow, Stiles and Deaton, with a call into Deaton's sister, wherever she is, manage to create a passive perception filter strong enough that the whole Pack kind of just gets a week's worth of watching people tango with trees and have full-on conversations with flowers as wyverns and horse-sized dragonflies buzz past overhead, and completely forget about it ten seconds later, or come up with a crazy, but much more plausible explanation for whatever happened all on their own. The town becomes a little overrun with flora, and the weather gets caught in that perpetual, beguiling drizzle, but there's humor to be found in it all, and there's something nice, laid-back, about how easy it goes down.

No monsters for a week, no people needing saved, no bloody, bruising work, just a kind of undercurrent of impish chaos, a joke that they're all in on.

On the last day, Hippolyta sweeps in from where she'd been prancing around the Preserve, finds them at Dig's at two o'clock in the morning just as the fog-mist rain finally begins letting up. She looks more than a little out of place, among the wood, plush plastic, and gleaming tile of it all, with her fey-wild and her ancient and her nature, it's like a forest versus a grease-fire, it's ill-fitted and oddly homey at the same time.

"I have liked it here very much," she says, a purr soaking into her tone.

None of them were really expecting her right now, so they're caught in the middle of a slapdash game of poker, snacks all around that Digsvestya keeps complaining about because he didn't make them himself, and Le'Mabh and Stiles keep poking fun at him for it even though he's built like a bear and they all know for a fact that it would take Laura, Scott, and a Beta at _least_ to hold him back if he got it in his head to wrestle that notion out of them—all of them are frozen, because she appeared out of thin air and they weren't exactly prepared, and it's tough, after everything they've all been through, to take it at face-value that this mostly unknown entity who just invaded their space isn't about to hurt them.

Tougher for the kids, the twins excepted, than the rest of them, granted, but Derek and Laura and theirs have been in this town long enough, by now, to recognize complacency as one of the quickest killers, here, and they're all so attuned to each other at this point that all it takes is one of them snapping just a little too sharply to attention, and everyone's keyed up.

"You have been kind to me, and allowed me the freedom to do as I please, so I shall give blessings, now that I must be going."

"Blessings?" Laura asks, wary, and Derek can see how Stiles has tensed beside him, has his hand hovering near the whip wrapped around his waist like a belt, fully prepared to defend if she attacks, no matter what the cost of killing something like a Púca might be.

Heavy, Derek figures, considering the way Stiles has been talking about it since the start.

"Yes," she says, happily, a little dreamily. "Last time I visited, I was turned away by a wench, ungrateful, unkind, so I cursed her, but I'm afraid I didn't know she had a babe growing in her belly. I'm so sorry, child," she tells Derek, teal eyes trained on him, firm in an affectionate, doddering grandmother way, "but it seems it misfired."

The Pack begins muttering, confusion and worry suffusing them, and Stiles inches closer, curving subtly so he's aligned between Derek and the possible threat, protective. Derek places a hand on his shoulder, fully prepared to shove him the fuck out of the way if it comes down to that.

"So!" She begins conclusively, slapping her hands together, "I repeal the curse! By sunrise today, you shall be as you were always meant to be! As for the rest of your Pack's blessing," her eyes twinkle, "your Nemeta and I have conversed as things like we do, and they've agreed to slumber for a year's time! Ah, I do so hope you've enjoyed my visit! Be sure to remember me to your children, when you have them; toodle-loo!"

And, in a flamboyant little explosion of flowerpetals, she's gone.

"What the hell," Isaac says succinctly.

"She left," Stiles says at the same time, the line of his shoulders still jagged, the light in his eyes still too sharp. "She's gone, I can't feel her anymore."

Derek squeezes his shoulder, willing the hyper-awareness and anxious unease out of them. "You say that like it isn't a good thing."

He exhales harshly, and leans into Derek's touch, for all that he stays rigid and on the defensive. It's better than him running, so, beyond tugging him a little closer, Derek lets it go. "It should be, only..."

"You were cursed?" Lydia wonders, "By her? When? How? And why in the nine hells didn't we know? Normally Stiles can sense that sort of thing miles away, normally _I_ can."

"Shit," Laura cuts in feelingly. "Holy, motherfucking shit."

"Care ta' clue us in, darlin'?" Dig asks, the edge of his smile lined with as much charm as it is teeth.

"Gods, I _knew_ , I knew something like this had happened before," she says, but it's distracted, she's not really talking to them, too caught up in the epiphany, running her hands frustratedly through her hair.

"Lulu, _Laura,"_ Derek says, loud enough to get her attention, "what're you talking about?"

She sighs, a long streaming exhale, as she looks up at him. "Mom was seven months pregnant with you," she says, "and all of a sudden there were wyverns, and all the trees and flowers were doing voodoo shit, so she went after whatever was doing it, because they were calling too much attention to themselves and freaking all the normals out. She came upon an old lady," Laura shrugs, "thought she was a run-of-the-mill drunkard sorceress, told her to get the fuck out, and that was the end of it as far as she was concerned."

"Except this is a _Púca_ we're talking about," Stiles says with dawning realization. "It's always the same with these types of things, if you spurn them, they curse you, if you grant them leave, they bless you. It's favor or insult, no in between, and it's _old_ , this stuff, it's not anything you can fight without getting _extremely_ fucked up in the process."

"So... I was cursed? Because mom upset Hippolyta? And now I'm... not," Derek says, fragmented, trying to put the pieces together and struggling, because, "I really don't _feel_ cursed?"

"No," Stiles sighs, brows furrowed, considering him in an intense way that leaves Derek breathless and with this strange, lingering clarity, that Stiles would probably go to war for him if he asked. He puts that down to how late it is and the shock he's probably in and the vivid fucking imagination he must have. "You wouldn't. If she was telling the truth... you've been cursed since before you were born, Der, you'd have no way of knowing, and I'm—" his face goes a little pinched, clouding and clearing in the same breath, before everything he's feeling is stored behind a blank sort of mask. "I wouldn't have been able to tell, either."

"Well, we won't be able to do or know anything until sunrise, right?" Allison says, eyebrows curved up, posture open and hopeful, "So, we just wait until then. I mean, that might be all we can do."

"It _is_ all we can do," Lydia agrees, flipping her hair over her shoulder and pointedly picking up her cards. "We're not done with our game, anyway, and we should be celebrating the _other_ thing she said. No beacon for a year? Just in time for the beginning of college? Curse-be-gone for a curse no one even realized existed? I'd say things are going our way, for once."

"Only, don't say that," Stiles tells her, half-wry, currently sticking himself restlessly to Derek's side, too worried and wary and without enough answers, not that Derek's complaining, "because when you say shit like that the worst possible thing happens."

She rolls her eyes at him with a, "Whatever," before raising twenty, and batting her lashes all vapid butter-wouldn't-melt, even though she knows the effect is pretty much lost on them.

* * *

Here's what happens when the first tendrils of murky sunlight start stretching across the sky: Derek stops being able to see.

Or, at least, he stops being able to see as he has his entire life.

The colors down leave him slowly, they leave in a literal blink. A split second of darkness, and then everything's faded down to black and white and shades of grey, and it guts him a little. Half because of something buried deep, all primal instinct and carnal, base, animal thought that screams death and fury, and whispers that color only goes like this when your soulmate _dies_ , and half because he's lived the entirety of his life under the guillotine of Macropia, he's _always_ had color, and losing it so viscerally, without warning or understanding, it stings.

He tells them the moment it happens, feeling too big for this Diner and too small for his skin, an itch crawling up his throat begging him to unleash a warbling, howling wolf song.

Laura looks a little horror-struck, the few of them that haven't gotten color yet are blinking slowly, all sympathy without any of the empathy because they probably couldn't relate if they tried, Scott is looking at Stiles wide-eyed, and Stiles is just _looking_ at him, gaping like a fish.

"So... I guess we know," he says a little lamely.

 _"Stiles,"_ Scott hisses.

"Huh," Erica says, "I have always wondered at the odds of having two people with Macropia in a town as small as ours."

Peter raises an eyebrow at her, "My dear girl, whatever are you talking about? As far as I know, no one else in this town has Macropia."

And Stiles' eyes flutter shut with something like a grimace.

"I—but—then—" she stammers, eyes going wide, before she rounds on Stiles, "Did you meet your soulmate and _lie_ about it?" She asks, three shades shy of wounded.

"I never lied about anything," he snaps at her, then recoils from how harsh that sounded, softening his tone, "I just didn't say anything when you jumped to your own conclusions."

"Lies of omission are still lies, Stiles," Philip says, not ukindly, and Stiles huffs something vaguely bitter.

Scott rolls his eyes, gets up, and before anyone can stop him, stalks over to where Stiles and Derek are sitting and shoves his brother into Derek's arms.

Just the same, between one blink and the next, a heavy, warm weight in his lap, the world repaints itself in techicolored vibrancy.

"What," Derek manages, inflectionless and so far past surprised he's pretty sure he's lost any semblance of rational thought, let alone the capacity to let this new revelation sink in.

"I'm sure you two have a lot to talk about," Scott says, annoyingly chipper, and enlists Dig and Le'Mabh in helping him drag all their nosy packmates away.

Laura, lit up with realization and a scary-sharp grin, cackles, crows over her shoulder on the way out, "You kids have fun!"

And then they're alone, he and Stiles, he and his soulmate, and everything's officially stopped making sense.

"What?" he wonders again, dazedly, hoping the word will anchor him back to reality.

Stiles' hands curl a little against his chest as he draws away slightly, looking up at him warily, and Derek doesn't know if it's the fact that he'd just gone achromatic for no more than sixty seconds, or that they're touching, but Stiles seems starkly vivid contrasted to everything else, the spectrum of him.

"I'm sorry," Stiles says, while Derek's brain is still doing its' level-best to catch up and his lungs are no longer a part of the program. "I—. You were it for me, the moment you touched me, but I was still a kid, then, and you were with Paige, and then you were _gone_ , and you still don't know, Der, all the shit that's happened. I'm fucked up, like, monumentally fucked up, and that shouldn't be—you deserve better than me, you've always deserved better, you're so—." Stiles chokes up, his face crumpling, tears welling in his eyes as he flutters them down, looks away. "You're so _good,"_ he whispers wetly, trembling, "and I couldn't—I shouldn't— _you_ shouldn't—"

 _"Stiles,"_ he says, cutting off the frayed string of words, swallowing in the devastating aftermath of them. "Stiles, I'm in love with you."

Dewy syrup eyes snap up to meet his, wild-wide, and Derek's never really been good at this, talking, but it's worth the effort, here, now, more than ever before. He curls one arm around Stiles, splaying a hand at the small of his back, gentle pressure, meant to stay him, keep him close, as the other hooks strands of russet hair behind his ear. Stiles' face is so utterly shocked that Derek huffs a small, soft, fleeting laugh.

"I thought I was born with color, I had no idea that you'd gotten color when I touched you, and I still fell in love with you. And you're right, not—not about everything, you are _all_ that I deserve and more, _so much_ more, you're beautiful, strong, brave, selfless—although that last one scares me, sometimes, if I'm being completely honest. You're _smart_ , Stiles, you're so smart you run circles around Lydia when you're not paying attention, and now that I'm trying to think of how to put into words everything I love about you, everything that makes you..." He trails off, shaking his head a little in awe, his fingers skating from Stiles' hair to his cheek to his jaw, hungry for touch, for the feel of skin, in a way he's never really experienced, there's a magnetism, a pull, that he'd felt before, maybe, without understanding exactly what it meant.

"I love you," he says again, because he likes the taste of that on his tongue, because he likes the sheer, raw, honesty of it, and because he likes the way it makes a shudder ripple up Stiles' spine. It's the most important thing, that, above all. "And you _are_ right, there are things I still don't know, but there are just as many things I've figured out on my own, and we can—. Together, okay?" He gentles his hand up Stiles' back and slides it across the side of his neck, up to his cheek, until he's cradling Stiles' face, diving deep into those eyes of his, letting his voice hit a lower register as that wolven lullaby-lilted rumble starts up within him. "We can figure it all out together, if you'll let us, if you want to." He exhales, slow and draining and just a little heartbreaking, rests his forehead against Stiles', "But only if you want to."

Stiles makes a noise that's so close to a sob it almost breaks him. "Okay," he rasps, tear-soaked and overwhelmed, his nails digging into Derek's skin through his shirt as he hangs onto him like Derek's the only thing left between him and all the monsters in the Gods' forsaken world. "Okay. Together, we'll—. Together."

Stiles tilts half to the side, sweeping a saltwater kiss to his cheek, then his jaw, then his mouth, a languid slide that gets a little heated when Stiles begs at Derek to open, and lets out a longing whimper when he does. It takes them a while, after that, to come up for air, and by the time that they do, Derek's back is against the hard line of the floor, and Stiles is straddling him, panting in a wrecked way, his kiss-bruised, spit-slick lips parted slightly, pupils blown so wide that all that syrup seems to have disappeared into a black hole, and the steady purr-tinged growl rumbling from the depths of Derek's chest gets thicker, richer.

"I love you, too," Stiles says, all lascivious-husk, lust-addled ramble. "I meant to say—but then—the whole—" he bends down to capture Derek's lips again, like he can't even help it.

"Yeah," Derek agrees, just as tongue-tied, even as his heart billows in his chest, and his soul begins to do elaborate flips somewhere relatively close to cloud nine.

His _soul_ , he thinks, and when Stiles lifts away to look at him, seemingly sensing the change in atmosphere, he doesn't have enough self-control to stop himself from breathing, amazed, "My soul."

But Stiles just smiles, a soft, shy sort of thing he's never seen before, tangles fingers through Derek's hair, and whispers back, like the spilling of a secret, "My soul."

* * *

_ Epilogue _

Valentine's day comes literally an hour or so after Derek finds out exactly what Stiles is meant to be to him.

They're still kind of lost in the haze of it, they were stealing and trading kisses as they picked up the evidence of a long night playing poker and set up the Diner for opening, right up until Stiles had to go to school and Derek to work.

It's full of shenanigans, today, like, now that the Púca and all her enchantments are gone everyone's decided to be extra crazy for the hell of it. You'd be surprised how many emergencies the fire department's got to handle that have nothing to do with fire.

And, all throughout, there's evidence of his Pack, here and there, and an extensive amount of update-texts from Stiles, keeping him in the loop; Allison and Scott have gone into honeymoon mode, even though they've been together for years and the puppy-love stage should really be over, by now. Lydia and Jackson are doing their annual 'we are the relationship that reigns supreme in this dilapidated high school' routine, which has both Derek and Stiles wondering what the hell Beacon Hills High is going to be like without its' king and queen, Stiles can't really imagine it, but Derek thinks some other ambitious couple will swoop in and take their place, that's how these things always go. Erica, Isaac, and Boyd are playing truant to hang out with Boyd's Nan and feed each other chocolate and have threesomes, probably—Derek snorts when Stiles texts him that, and then finds himself grinning dopily for the rest of the day.

His change in demeanour is such that all his co-workers are giving him startled glances that morph into knowing smiles.

When he gets back home to change, Laura's holed up in her room, skyping Cahya, and Derek spares a moment to wonder when his sister's soulmate will ditch biking in the himalayas to catch up with them, and how she'll like all their new packmates when she does. He's missed her, he has, along with the little pieces of his family that scattered a couple of years after they landed in New York, but he's honestly so much happier here that it barely bears thinking about, most days, for all that the loss that brought them here is still a raw, gaping, infected wound.

It's probably not doing him any good ignoring it as he is, but taday's not really the day for that.

Today is the day for first dates and long, overdue conversations, and maybe just a little hope.

Today is the day for love, and, he thinks, for all that they only just figured it out at dawn this morning, Stiles and he probably have that in spades.


End file.
